


In an Empty Hearted Town

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Friends to Lovers, Holidays, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 12:10:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15908007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: What do you do, once you win?If you're Gabriel Reyes, you move back to LA and try to become a normal person, whatever that means.(canon divergence circa Uprising)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> mood: guess i'll die.jpg  
> something I don't particularly enjoy is made up families of characters. i'm pretty fuckin lore-loyal, and i'm not into things that'll be jossed as soon as new lore comes out. doesn't make me tap out of a fic, but not my biggest jam  
> so what do i do, i write a fuck load of it  
> ugh why self why
> 
> this was a breath away from goin full 2006 and being songfic just fyi. title from Warren Zevon's [Empty-Hearted Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e9wiDFjGh8) for good reason  
> soundtrack to writing was Zevon's Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

It happened so suddenly.

One day Gabe was the head of Blackwatch, fighting Talon and omnics and everyone trying to tear apart his organization.

It wasn’t the next day that it all was gone, but it sure felt like it sometimes.

They had been on tenterhooks for awhile - the Rome attack was bad, Oslo was worse, and Venice started the crumble. Gérard was dead with Amélie in the wind, Moira was disavowed, they were looking in their own backyard for traitors. The UN itself was looking oh so carefully through all their dirty laundry, Blackwatch and Overwatch both. In public Jack was on the edge of disparaging Blackwatch, but in private he plotted into the night with Gabe in a desperate attempt to hold their groups together with spit and hope.

Blackwatch was officially suspended when Gabe had asked Jesse - as a friend, he made sure to ask Jesse and not Agent McCree - to take a look at what was happening on the ground in London. Somehow, Jack and Ana didn’t believe him when he shrugged and said Jesse was on vacation, but they grudgingly accepted the information. That little bit of extra intel was what changed everything, though. Jack’s little time-twisted protégée was there early enough to notice a gathering of omnics and black-clad fighters, and they were able to drop a Torbjörn-crafted bomb on it before things got bad. They saved the mayor and Mondatta, rescuing them and the city from what could have nearly been a war. At the same time, their Russian Defense friends set off a targeted and ammo-upgraded EMP of their own, and on another continent the second Doomfist’s mentee succeeded in accidentally killing both his teacher and himself, along with half their followers.

In the space of just a few days, Talon, Null Sector, and most of the violent omnic resistance had been taken out.

Mondatta and the Shambali stepped up, successfully guiding many of the world’s omnics towards peace. They worked with the god programs and the ominums, trying to find the balance between existing as beings in their own right while getting along with humans. 

It wasn’t perfect, of course - you don’t defeat thirty-odd years of issues in a week. But...things changed. The world changed. Overwatch and Blackwatch changed.

Genji left first. He said something about the war within himself finding balance, and he had some things to do at home. Gabe kept tabs on him for awhile - it looked like he’d gone back to Japan for a time, and last he heard he and his newly-reconciled brother were doing work with the Shambali in Nepal.

Jesse was next. It would have hurt more, if Gabe’d had time to sleep in the months previous and exist in a state other than exhaustion. It was a year into the reconstruction. Blackwatch was virtually gone, kept alive only in the clothing that he and Jesse wore because they couldn’t be bothered to be fitted for new gear. While Jack and Ana dealt with the worldwide political issues, Gabe kept it closer to home. Instead of finding the best places for black ops teams to go and kill people, he was finding the best places for peacekeeping teams to go and negotiate pockets of violence out of existence. 

Gabe had been falling asleep at his desk, waiting for an update to come in from Fareeha - a normal hour where she was but 0400 for him. With the worst of the violence over, Ana lost the last of her arguments against her daughter joining Overwatch, and they had become a closer family because of it.

A knock on the door, and Gabe’s head jerked up. He smiled a bit to see Jesse at the door, before waking up fully and attempting to turn his face into something more befitting of a commander. The line of drool down his cheek didn’t help. “You’re up late.”

“Yeah.” Jesse was scraping a fingernail along his belt buckle, something he only did when nervous about something. Gabe tried to get his brain in order, casting an assessing look over him. He wasn’t wearing anything Black- or Overwatch related, just jeans and boots and his faded serape. Gabe felt a sudden feeling of being on a precipice, looking downwards, but wasn’t quite sure why.

“You okay?” he asked, as the moment stretched too thin.

“I’m leaving. Leaving Overwatch.”

Gabe nearly replied, “You mean Blackwatch,” because he and Jesse were still Blackwatch on the books, no matter what they did now. He then processed the actual words.

“What...brought this on?” he asked with a steadier voice than he thought he would have.

A sad smile twisted at the edges of Jesse’s mouth. “You an’ me, Gabe, we’re relics. Of Blackwatch. You’re fine, you can still do the commander thing for anyone because that’s what you do well. But I was never part of SEP or Overwatch like you, I was Blackwatch through and through. And that’s gone now.” He took a breath, dragging his hand away from his buckle with a final scrape. “I’ve spent twenty years killin’ for other people. And now, I think I might finally have the time, the chance to do somethin’ different. Somethin’ for me.”

He shifted his hips, one thumb hooked in a pocket, and as well as Gabe knew the man he had no idea how to read what his body language was saying right then. “You’ve been a good boss, Gabriel, and a better friend. But I want some time where no one’s tellin’ me what to do and where to go.”

Gabe tried to fight through the exhaustion and confusion in his head, but didn’t know what to say, what to do. “If you ever need a place to come back to, Jesse, or a recommendation or an in somewhere....” his voice trailed off.

“I’ll know who to call.” 

They looked at each other for a long moment, before Jesse turned and vanished from the doorway in a flutter of red and gold. Gabe assumed he’d be leaving in the next few days, he’d have to see what transport he booked so he could give him a final handshake or hug or...something. How did you say goodbye to someone who had had your back for so many years?

Gabe would never find out, because Jesse had gone straight from Gabe’s office to an Orca and left the continent.

There was anger and hurt swirling in him but they never really got a sense to develop or settle because Gabe had to lead a team in person just a few days later to take out some upstart omnic in Monaco that nearly succeeded in bringing back Talon on a small scale. Creeping through the red and gold of the casino, Gabe barely ducked a shot from a sniper on a balcony, taking them out with a blast from his shotgun. Hours later as they were tallying casualties he pushed back the sniper’s mask and saw that it was Amélie. He stood there for long moments, looking at her sharp-boned face and wondering what happened to them all. 

That was the start of the end for Gabe.

It wasn’t immediate, of course. You don’t just leave somewhere you’ve spent three decades working for merely because your subordinate left and you killed an assassin, even if that assassin had once eaten at your dinner table and insulted your wine and the subordinate had been so very much more. And it wasn’t only because of those events - he was getting older, getting more tired. He wasn’t elderly by any means, if nothing else the SEP chemicals in his body would easily keep him decades younger than he should have been. But he was emotionally, mentally drained. He started to care less, and even during peacetime that attitude could get people killed.

So Gabe started to shift things. Assigned Angela to take over anything medical-related, raised Fareeha up to organize missions, convinced Ana that they should have an omnic-led group within Overwatch to handle certain aspects of omnic-human relations. A year and a half, and Gabe had delegated himself out of existence.

He stopped by Jack’s office, feeling a strange parallel to Jesse visiting him a few years before. All he had to do, though, was lean against the doorway as Jack’s sharp blue eyes looked him over and said, “So when’s your last day?”

Gabe spent a week cleaning up loose ends and attempting to pack up the quarters he’d called home for...god, was it really the same rooms for twenty years now? How did that even happen? Gabe wasn’t a sentimental person, but he found little mementos shoved in corners that he’d either forgotten about or had vanished into becoming visual background noise over the years. His old dog tags from SEP. One of Genji’s shuriken split by one of Jesse’s bullets during drunken hijinks. A hat Fareeha had knitted when she was eleven or twelve, Blackwatch logo inexpertly felted onto the brim. An ugly cactus-shaped copper ashtray that Jesse had found in an abandoned bar on a mission that happened to be near where Gabe had recruited him as a teenage gang member, that Jesse had brought back and pointedly used whenever he was pissed at Gabe. 

Gabe brushed away the dust and ash, running his fingers over the engraving that welcomed him to historic Route 66, the Main Street of America. He tried to remember the last time Jesse had used it, but couldn’t pick out specifics. They really had grown apart at the end, post-London: Gabe vanishing into paperwork and politics and Jesse genially going along with whatever missions he was sent on. 

He hadn’t really let himself mourn the loss of his friend. Because that’s what it was - they weren’t teammates the way they had been, Gabe wasn’t even really his commander by the end. But they were friends. As he stood in an empty room and held the engraved metal, Gabe finally felt the full brunt of what he was doing. Now it was him leaving his friends - Ana, Angela, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Fareeha. Jack. God, Jack. They’d known each other since Gabe was twenty one, they’d held each other sweating through SEP injections and bleeding through Overwatch missions. They weren’t friends, they were...something Gabe didn’t have a name for. Despite his preferences and the man’s good looks he’d never been attracted to Jack, the attitude he often copped during their arguments being an immediate libido killer. But he was his brother and his brother-in-arms for more than half his life, and now Gabe was leaving.

Gabe sat on the bed and didn’t cry. He kept running his hands over the lines of the ashtray, and let the enormity of what he was doing wash over him. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

For lack of anywhere better, Gabe ended up in Los Angeles. He’d grown up there, but hadn’t been back for anything other than temporary missions and family visits since he was eighteen. He put some things in a storage unit, packed a bag and went to his sister Christina’s place over in Topanga. Her oldest was at UCLA, but the younger three were still at home, in various stages of high school and middle school. Her husband had been caught in the middle of a Talon attack about a decade back, and Gabe always felt a faint feeling of guilt about it despite the fact there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

The rambling house was large and cheerful, full of teenagers and love. Having lived at the behest of the US and then world government for decades, Gabe hadn’t ever needed much money in his adult life and so had sent all his early pay to his sister. She cut him off after a while, telling him that she had her husband had perfectly good jobs and he didn’t know what the future would hold. Christina had turned that early investment into a true home, though one that Gabe made it back to only about once a year to everyone’s collective disappointment.

He got to finally spend quality time with junior computer science geek Danishka and eighth grade terror twins Benji and Alana. They were great kids, as smart and motivated as their parents, but Gabe found himself collapsing into a chair with a beer after a Saturday of taking them all to the Science Center and Natural History Museum, too tired to even lift his arm to drink.

“How do you do it, especially on your own and with a full-time job?” he asked Christina, who was quietly laughing at him as she sat down with her own drink.

She shrugged. “It’s what you do, because there’s no other choice. How did you get all of your lot to listen to you on missions? It’s the same thing.”

“Yeah, but I had adults. They listened to me.” At Christina’s skeptical eye, he relented. “Mostly. But they knew the consequences for not listening. And they were trained, all peak physical shape, but they didn’t have,” Gabe paused at the sound of a thump and a scream from above. “Quite this type of energy. If you put together, oh I don’t know, Fareeha at twelve, and then Jesse and Lena when we first recruited them, and sugared them all up, it might -  _ might _ \- equal your lot.”

Christina was quiet for a moment. “How are they all doing, do you know? It’s been a few months.”

Gabe lifted a shoulder. “I’m trying not to keep super close tabs, but Ana keeps me updated. Fareeha’s doing well, up visiting her dad in Canada right now. Everyone else is just doing what they were when I left, keeping the world safe. Jack’s grumpier, apparently, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from me being gone, general stress, or him just turning into a cantankerous old coot.”

“An old coot that’s three years younger than you.”

“Never said I wasn’t old, too.” Despite his words he looked too many years younger than Christina, though he was five years older. There was a point at which their timelines crossed, and it made Gabe feel odd to see more and more of their mother in her face.

“How’s Jesse?” asked Christina gently. Gabe would often entertain them all with tales of Jesse’s hijinks, up until two years ago when they suddenly stopped. Christina didn’t know exactly what happened and hadn’t pressed, but she’d surmised that he’d left and Gabe wasn’t happy about it.

He sighed. “I...don’t know. Don’t know where he is, where he might be or might be doing. I tried to find him, once everything calmed down after he left, but,” a slightly bitter chuckle, “we trained him to disappear. And he did.”

“I know you two were close.”

“Yeah. But I can’t begrudge him for doing it. He went from a gang to Blackwatch, and that wasn’t by choice. Then he ended up there for so much longer than any of us expected. And this...this is what we’ve worked towards, to letting people live freely. Took him awhile to get there, but he did. I just wish I could have said goodbye properly.”

Christina watched his face. It was more than not saying goodbye properly. Her brother, for all his expertise in...seemingly everything, was relatively emotionally stunted. With the exception of her and her family, he didn’t have a personal relationship with anyone who wasn’t associated with Overwatch or the UN. She didn’t know if he honestly knew what a non-work friend was, much less someone he might want to be romantic with. She’d never met the younger man, but she’d always vaguely hoped that Jesse and Gabe might get together, based just on how Gabe’s face would light up while telling stories about him. Her kids thought of him as some kind of trickster god with a gun, forever thwarting their beloved uncle.

“You have time now. Maybe you could track him down.”

Gabe wouldn’t meet her eyes, digging a bare toe into the carpet. “I don’t know, Christy. I feel like he would have reached out over the past two years.”

She decided to let it go. “Speaking of time, not that we all don’t love having you here, but you’re getting stir crazy. Any ideas of what you’re going to do with your time?”

“Yeah, actually. Monday I’m getting lunch with Yari on campus, then I’m going to meet up with some representatives from LAPD, Metro and SWAT. Historically they were resistant to Overwatch representation in LA County, even though Watchpoint Inland Empire is practically within sight to the east. They want to talk about non-lethal omnic resistance, which I think is great. Might do some consulting work for them.”

“Sounds great. Remember that Yari has a track meet against USC Thursday night, she really wants you to be there.”

“Mmhmm. And are you going to be supporting her, finally turn traitor to your roots?” Christina graduated from USC and worked there as a lead researcher in their bioengineering department. She had been an athlete in her own right back in the day, and it was a joking family feud as to who would be backed on any given battle: mother or daughter. In actuality Christina was a cheering supportive mother, albeit one who wore a Trojans t shirt under the Bruins jacket.

“It is one of the last meets of the year, I suppose I’ll support her, if I must.”

“So proud of you, Christy. Now I see why they like it so much when I visit.”

Christina collected their empty bottles and got up, ruffling Gabe’s hair on the way to the kitchen. “Get some sleep, old man.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe sat at the table in the restaurant in a suit, feeling distinctly uncomfortable being surrounded by young and beautiful college students that seemingly had no idea how to sit still. Although his back was to the back wall there were several tables behind him and his situational awareness was on high alert. 

He raised an eyebrow as Yari thunked her purse down in front of him. 

“You look like you’re about to attack someone. Chill out, it’s just college students here.”

“Hi Uncle Gabriel, it’s so nice to see you. Thank you for taking me out to lunch. Sorry for being late.” The sarcasm was palpable. 

Yari rolled her eyes as she continued around the table to give him a strong hug. “Thanks for saying all that so I don’t have to.”

“Uh huh. Please tell me you were at least more polite to your thesis advisor.”

“I would be, if he would stop trying to convince me that Tchaikovsky actually died of cholera instead of being too gay to live.”

Yari had gone against the interests of virtually everyone she was related to, and was finishing her degree in musicology. Gabe filed it under ‘didn’t understand but was supportive’, the same way he was with Benji’s Lego creations or Danishka’s fascination with historical accuracy in romance novels. Whatever, he loved them and would pat them on the back even when he only understood one word in five.

He let Yari rant on about long-dead Russians, managing to clarify that her advisor liked arguing with her but was supportive and had written glowing letters of reference for her. “Any idea of where you might go for grad school?”

“I thought about New York, but everyone there is still sucking on Taruskin’s dead and rotting dick, and I don’t feel like starting out at a disadvantage.”

“No, really, Yari, tell me how you really feel. I hope the language in your thesis is better.”

“You of all people can’t lecture me on language, Uncle Gabe. I’ve read the interviews.”

“Yeah, but it took me years of training to work my assholishness up to those levels. You’re just starting out. Wait ‘til your PhD’s done before using the profanity in public.”

“Fine, fine. I think I’ll stay in state, though. UCLA and USC are the top in the nation for their programs, and Berkley just got a guy who’s doing some really fascinating work with Eastern European Romanticism. Might end up in Boston, though I’m afraid it would break Mom’s heart.”

Gabe cocked his head. “You know I love your mom, but don’t take her into account. Do what’s best for you. You can always come home. Look at me.”

“About that. You ever gonna move out of the spare room?”

“Sooner rather than later, hopefully, hence the suit. Meeting with some LAPD and such people this afternoon, going to talk about technology and behavior and things.”

Yari twirled her straw thoughtfully. “You know, I have someone you should maybe talk to. My pop music professor brought in this guy from the history department to talk to us about how music was used in the military. His thing is modern, developing history and the Omnic Crisis. And I know he’s always looking for brains to pick and people coming in to talk.”

“Sure, give him my number, it’d be interesting to see what academics think about all of it.”

“Will do. You want that pickle?”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Six months later, and Gabe had a pretty good routine going. 

He’d found an apartment in Baldwin Hills, halfway between his two work areas of the LAPD Headquarters and UCLA. He picked the location not just for the ease of commute and public transport, but because of the nearby parks. Gabe hadn’t realized how much he was used to having a green area that he could run around in to work off stress until he was surrounded by concrete constantly.

He met with various LAPD and Sheriff’s Department representatives every other day, instructing them in everything from omnic relations to best practices for firearms. It was relatively low-stress, although everyone there was highly trained they were nothing like the Overwatch agents he was used to. All he had to worry about was dodging a stray rubber bullet, not being caught in a time blink or ending up with a sword thrust through somewhere unfortunate. 

His Tuesdays and Thursdays were taken up, unexpectedly, by academic lecturing. Christina had laughed herself sick when she found out, and gave Gabe a tweed blazer with elbow patches for his birthday. He’d be more annoyed if the jacket didn’t look so good on him. He’d developed a friendship with the professor Yari had hooked him up with, Sam Miller. After meeting a few times he figured out that the guy didn’t want to use his insider info to tear apart Overwatch academically, he just wanted to place everything in its accurate historical context. After an argument about Overwatch tactics used during operations in Siberia versus Russian tactics during the Winter War, Sam suggested he teach a class about the Omnic Crisis and how it shaped the current world.

Gabe was wary about it, and called up Jack and Ana on a videoconference to talk it over with them. After their own surprise at the idea of Gabe as a purely academic lecturer, they collectively worked through the possible ramifications. Gabe wasn’t as well known as Jack, but was still a major international player in Overwatch and the UN, retired as he might be. They decided to not have Gabe discuss any operations less than ten years old in any detail, and of course continue to keep Blackwatch out of it. Somehow they had come through the whole crisis with Blackwatch’s existence unknown outside of those who should know, but there were times that it was close.

Gabe found himself enjoying the classes. He had two sections, only fifteen students in each, so they could really have some good discussions. It was hard at first to deal with students who didn’t bend to his opinions - because they were in fact opinions and not orders, and the students were very much not under his command. It let him stretch his argumentative muscles in a way they hadn’t been since Jesse, Jack and Ana - the only people who wouldn’t let him get away with a snapped out order and expectation of obedience. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

It was Thursday, and Gabe had given his last final for the semester. He had a long weekend ahead - all his LAPD contacts were out at a conference, so he had virtually nothing to do until the next Tuesday when grades were due. When Sam suggested they go out for drinks to celebrate the end of Gabe’s first semester, he readily agreed. Daphne Phan, a friend of theirs from over in poli sci who liked to pick apart Gabe’s old ops with a razor tined comb and an even sharper mind, came with them. She suggested a bar just two streets over from Gabe’s apartment that he hadn’t known existed. Despite living in his place for the better part of a year, he still had to get to know the neighborhood. Maybe that’d be something to do over winter break - it’s not like LA would be coated in snow.

It was a cheerful-looking bar, all warm wood and copper fixtures and a surprising amount of soft light from large frosted-over windows. Daphne and Gabe grabbed a table at the side while Sam stepped out to call his wife. Their waitress, a girl that Daphne recognized from one of her classes, brought them drinks and a basket of tostones that Gabe dove into.

Sam laughed as he sat down. “Were you in fact raised by wolves? Wolves that grew plantains?”

Gabe swallowed before pointing a greasy finger. “I haven’t had good tostones since my sister decided out of nowhere that I needed to think about my arteries and refuses to make them or give me the recipe. Get your own.”

They chatted about this and that, students they had in common and what was in store for them next semester. Their waitress stopped by and said she was going off shift, but their bill had been moved to the bar so they could stop by there for more drinks. She went off with a hug from Daphne, and they continued their conversation.

Gabe swirled the ice in his otherwise empty glass, and debated about getting another. He’d walked there so he didn’t have to worry about being too drunk to drive, but he definitely didn’t want to walk drunk either. He glanced towards the bar to look for the bartender their waitress had mentioned, and froze.

Standing behind the bar, calmly wiping a glass down and talking with a customer, was Jesse McCree.

Gabe watched for another minute - there were four million people in LA, and there were only so many variations on human features. He once followed a man for four blocks because he was half-convinced he was Jack. This, though. This was Jesse.

His hair was longer, his skin tanner. His face was more smooth, like threads of tension that kept his mouth turned down and his brows pulled in had been cut. The cigar was missing, but then the smoking ban would have guaranteed that anyways. He wore a faded plaid shirt that Gabe thought was familiar, but it could have been any one of Jesse’s dozen of them, or even brand new. Gabe still had a thread of uncertainty running through him until Jesse looked up and met his eyes.

He didn’t freeze like Gabe did, but he became absolutely still in a familiar way. The way he did on an op when he saw an enemy, another predator. When confronted with the sudden unknown. Gabe didn’t know how he felt that this stillness was applied to him. 

Gabe distantly heard Sam asking him if he was okay. Gabe broke the gaze to turn to Sam and say he was fine, he’d be right back. He looked back at the bar and Jesse was gone. Heart in his throat he stood, only to see him now just a few feet away. Gabe pushed his chair back and took a step forward before finding himself wrapped in familiar arms.

The smell of his shampoo, his laundry detergent was different. There was no earthy smell of tobacco that was normally baked into all of Jesse’s gear and clothing. But underneath, there was that clean and slightly spicy smell that was  _ Jesse _ . Maybe it was some cologne or just the way his skin smelled, but it read enough like  _ home _ to his senses that Gabe had to close his eyes against the threat of tears.

The hug went on for too long and past too long, Jesse’s breath puffing unevenly against Gabe’s neck, but he didn’t care. He finally pulled back, just enough to push Jesse’s hair behind his ear with a slightly shaky hand so he could see his face. His eyes were a little tired but not exhausted, clear and bright with some unshed tears of his own.

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

A chuckle. “And you’re wearin’ tweed, so let’s call us even.”

Clearing his throat, Jesse stepped back a bit, both men letting go of each other. “I’m on shift until 9, but there’s a diner, a block over. You know it?” 

Gabe didn’t, but he’d find out. He nodded. “I’ll see you there.”

Jesse went back behind the bar, Gabe went back to his table. He sat down heavily, thoughts of getting a new drink now the farthest thing from his mind.

“Gabe.” He looked up into the worried face of Sam and slightly awed face of Daphne.

“I’m pretty sure I heard swelling orchestral music there, bud. Somewhere a dozen romance writers are salivating and they don’t know why. Who  _ was _ that?” Daphne asked, leaning forward with a lowered voice.

“Not- it’s not like you’re thinking. He’s a very old friend and colleague, who suddenly left and we didn’t get to properly say goodbye.” Gabe’s heart was still beating too fast, but his breathing and voice were steady.

Sam had a speculative look on his face. “Old colleague? Like in Overwatch?” He started to look over at Jesse, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

“Please don’t. He left and wanted to make a fresh start of things. I don’t know what he’s been up to, but I doubt he wants any attention about his past.”

Daphne’s smile didn’t falter but Sam jerked as she kicked him under the table. “We’ll leave it alone, Gabe. But I expect details after your little tête-à-tête tonight.” She leaned back and looked him up and down with a narrowed eye. “You’re going to shower, right?”

Gabe looked down at himself. He looked fine, right? “Should...I?”

“Yeah. Shower, clean up the goatee, wear the dark grey sweater you had on like two weeks ago.” Gabe looked to Sam for help, but he was nodding along. 

“Why aren’t you stopping her?”

“Because I’ve been married for twenty years and have almost no single friends. This is certainly the most interesting thing, if not the only thing, that’s happened in your personal life for as long as I’ve known you.”

“I told you, we’re not like that.” Gabe muttered, glancing over at the bar and seeing Jesse reassuringly at the far end, out of hearing.

“Did you want to be?” The teasing was gone from Daphne’s voice.

The “no” on the tip of Gabe’s tongue somehow never made it out of his mouth. He stared at the melting ice in his glass.

The sound of chairs moving, and then Daphne was pulling him up. “You’ve got an hour. Go home, shower, change. Go see your man. The diner he’s talking about is just south on La Cienega. Text me after.”

Gabe found himself outside the bar, Daphne and Sam waving as they went off to their cars. He hoped one of them had paid, he thought, as he started the walk home. 


	2. Chapter 2

Gabe actually did need a shower - the class his building was in had the heat on full blast in consideration of it being December, but seemed to forget that it was December in LA and it was 70 outside. He stood naked in his bedroom and stared at his closet. He tried to think of something to wear other than the sweater Daphne suggested, just to be ornery, but couldn’t think of anything better. 

He pulled it on, along with a faded pair of black tac pants that he was pretty sure were older than Jesse, having been retired to off-duty clothing years before. Even though he was nearly positive that tonight would start and end at the diner, he compulsively straightened up his apartment. Never a messy person, he still made sure everything was in its place. His hand paused on straightening the damn copper cactus ashtray on the entryway table. He had opened a bag to unexpectedly find it when he was unpacking, and it had somehow become the dish that he tossed his keys in. 

Gabe looked up to examine himself in the mirror hanging above the table. Almost three years. He didn’t think he looked any different, but it’s not like he examined his face all that often. More threads of grey in his hair, but his eyes weren’t in such pits of blackness now that he was getting more sleep and less stress, so he called it a wash. Same scars, same lines, lost some bulk thanks to not having to keep up with conditioning, but nothing major. 

He checked the clock on the wall and stepped into his boots, locking up behind him as he left. The diner really was just a block over, yet another place in the neighborhood that Gabe should have learned about. He felt vaguely ashamed at himself, for not having done his research. The old Commander Reyes never would have done that. 

Gabe stepped into light and bustle, the diner surprisingly busy for a Thursday night. He blinked for a moment before a no-nonsense woman with the knobby yellowed fingers of a lifelong smoker and the attitude of an impatient judge stopped before him. 

“How many, hon?”

“Uh, two, but I’m meeting -” Gabe stopped as he saw Jesse at a table tucked against the wall. “Oh, there he is.” 

The waitress glanced back, her face softening. “You’re here with Jess? Well that makes you family, then. Grab a chair, I’ll get you coffee.”

Gabe made his way over to the table, sitting in a chair that put his back to the kitchen but no customers. “Jess?” Gabe had never heard anyone call him that.

Jesse shrugged easily. “Ruthie decided to adopt me a few years back, didn’t give me much choice in the matter.”

“A few years. So you’ve been here awhile.” Gabe tried to make it sound like just a comment, and not  _ why here why not tell me why why why. _

“Two, I think.” His mouth opened to say more, but Ruthie showed up with coffee and water for the two. 

“Know what you want, hon?”

“Two of my usual, sausage instead of bacon on his an’ eggs over easy.”

Ruthie glanced at Gabe, who shrugged. She flipped her order book back and walked off. 

“You know that she’s goin’ to interrogate me about you next time I come in.”

“Cost of gaining family.”

A pause as they doctored their coffees. “So yeah, as I was sayin’. I took a while to travel around, just...seein’ the sights. Tryin’ to visit places and get out of the habit of casin’ them for an op and just enjoy ‘em for what they were. Ended up here when Fareeha had a friend who had a cousin...somethin’ like that, can’t remember the exact relationship but they needed some help. Somehow never left.”

Gabe didn’t ask what ‘some help’ meant, and Jesse didn’t offer. He felt a razor thrill of annoyance run through him that Fareeha had known how to get in contact with him but Gabe hadn’t.

“Anyways, I got a couple of things goin’. Do some construction and such for a charity in the area durin’ the week, have the bar on weekends. This an’ that.”

Gabe looked at Jesse, who was staring down into his coffee. He seemed...at peace. “Are you happy?”

Jesse looked up, really met his eyes for the first time. “Happy’s a strong word. Content. That works.”

It was now Gabe’s turn to be eyed up and down. He was granted a brief respite by Ruthie showing up with their food. Pancakes, eggs over easy, sausage, home fries. Jesse handed him hot sauce without him asking, and they messed with their food in a familiar way - Jesse mixing his home fries into his scrambled eggs and Gabe dipping his pancakes into his yolks.

“And how about you?” Jesse asked, picking up the earlier thread like it had never been dropped.

“Teaching, oddly enough. In a couple of capacities. Working with LAPD on becoming a better department, better able to handle omnics. And at UCLA, talking about history of the Crisis and how it was responded to. Those were some of my coworkers at the bar with me.”

Jesse chewed, swallowed, cut his pancakes apart. “You say ‘teachin’ like it’s somethin’ weird for you, but it sounds like you’re doin’ the same thing you always have. Just in nicer clothing.”

Gabe let the sentence percolate as he ate. He was right. Of course he was, Jesse had sat through more of his lessons, whether learning or teaching them himself, than anyone. Maybe they had called it tactical training and operations planning, but it was all the same thing. 

There was Jesse for you. Distilling everything down to a pithy sentence and not getting how difficult that was for everyone else.

They talked of minor things - the charity Jesse was involved in was on the edge of the park not two blocks from Gabe’s apartment. Gabe agreed to stop by some time, see what all they were doing. Jesse was happy to hear Gabe got to spend time with his family - as Gabe had told them about Jesse, he in turn had told Jesse about them. 

Gabe didn’t ask why he left without saying goodbye. 

He didn’t ask what the tipping point was.

He didn’t ask where Jesse lived, who his friends were, if he was seeing anyone.

They paid, traded phone numbers, and promised to get in touch like any other friends who hadn’t seen each other in awhile. But...that’s not what they were. Gabe watched as Jesse got into a well-used pickup, lengths of board rattling in the bed and mud spattered on the wheels. He walked home, pretending it wasn’t strange to want to know exactly where he was going, what he was doing.

They’d lived in each others’ back pockets for so long. On any given day for fourteen years Gabe could have told you with near-certainty where Jesse McCree was, who he was talking to, and likely what he was wearing with what weapons and why. Jesse could very well have done the same for him. And now he was rattling off in a pickup truck into a city of four million, and Gabe had no idea who he was anymore.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Weeks and then months passed. He and Jesse exchanged a few texts - happy new year, saw you on TV for a second, saw you walking but was too far away to say hello - but nothing major. Gabe couldn’t figure out if that was better or worse than when he didn’t know where he was.

Gabe had a free Saturday afternoon, and so he spent it going on a run. He’d been slowly getting to know his area during his free time, and found a very nice coffee shop that he did work in regularly. He was currently looking for a local bar because he couldn’t quite deal with going to the one Jesse worked in at the moment.

Hood up and head down, Gabe rounded a corner, headed towards home. He glanced over, then did a double take to see a possibly-familiar figure. He thought it might be Jesse, but would have continued on if the figure hadn’t waved a hand at him. He turned, following the path over to him, slowing as he got closer so he wouldn’t be panting.

Jesse was seated on a picnic table, apparently reading from a tablet, as two tiny girls flitted about him. One looked just like Yari had at age six, all long dark hair and smiles and attitude to spare. The other looked at Gabe with a suspicious eye and flat set mouth in amusing contrast to her sweet round face and beribboned puffballs of hair. Half of Jesse’s head was done up in braids of varying levels of tightness and ability, and the smiling girl was working on a wavering cornrow, doing her best to keep it straight.

Gabe bit back a whole series of smiles at Jesse’s warning eye, only saying, “It looks like you’re working very hard there, ladies.”

“We  _ are _ ,” said the mini-Yari. “Esse is going to be a braider like her auntie and I’m going to do nails and we’re going to open our own shop maybe next  _ year _ if we get good enough but Mr Jesse said we need to wait and we need to practice on better hair because we just have Mr Jesse and his isn’t right.” Gabe had no idea how she had so much breath in her tiny body.

“Have a seat, welcome to my world,” said Jesse, patting the bench beside him. 

Gabe sat, stretching his legs out before the muscles tightened. “So when you said you do ‘construction and such’, this is the ‘and such’?”

“Yeah. We do a lot of buildin’, but it’s playgrounds and safe spaces as much as actual structures. Even gardens an’ all that. They run mentorship an’ after school programs here. I’m not officially part of it, but I’m kinda -  _ ow _ , Thali! - involved with a lil’ bit of everything with the program. They also do citizenship and ESL classes and all of that, they’ve really worked up to bein’ a good community center.”

He gestured behind him. “This is Thalia and Esse, they’re part of the after school program. We had a hairstylin’ school promise to give us some of their old mannikins soon, but until then they’ve decided to use me instead.” Gabe heard the fondness in his words, and knew that even if they’d had a full cosmetology school at their fingertips Jesse would still probably let them clamber all over him.

Watching Jesse’s face, Gabe was surprised to have his hood suddenly tugged back. He turned to look into Esse’s small and determined face. “Can I braid your hair? It looks like it’s better than Mr Jesse’s and he’s too tenderheaded.”

“Don’t bother him -” Gabe waved Jesse’s protest off with a hand. This first grader was holding his scarred gaze better than many armed and trained soldiers, and such fearlessness should be rewarded.

“First off, it’s usually polite to introduce yourself to someone that you’re planning on touching.” He waited for her to make the first move. 

She stuck out a hand, saying loudly in a single breath, “Hi I’m Esse what’s your name can I braid your hair?”

Gabe shook the tiny hand whose fingers didn’t even reach his palm. “Hello, Esse. I’m Gabe. You can braid my hair but I was just running so it’s probably gross and sweaty.”

She shrugged, then pushed his large muscled shoulders with her small hands until he was sitting the way she wanted him to. Short fingers started pulling at sections of his hair, and Gabe relaxed back against the edge of the table.

“Sorry for draggin’ you into this.” Jesse sounded amused and rueful.

“If you think I didn’t have all this and worse done when Christina’s kids were this age, then you’re wrong. Do you know how hard it is to get red nail polish out of your cuticles?”

“I knew you liked those leather gloves for a reason.” 

“My secret is out.”

They were quiet for a bit as the girls chattered, talking about this cartoon and that thing from school. Gabe had nearly dozed off in the warm sunshine despite the pulling from his scalp when he felt something on his leg. 

It was Jesse’s tablet. “Here, take a look at this.”

Gabe held the tablet up in front of his eyes, having gotten a pinch to his neck when he tried to tilt his head. It was a blueprint, schematics for...he rotated the view, what looked like a community garden, dog run, pavilions, and a whole host of other things that had abbreviations he didn’t know. He moved the image around and noted the streets bordering it. “This is for…”

“Yeah, just over there. It’s an undesignated green space, no one’s really done anything with it for decades but it’s just waitin’ to be used. They let me have a crack at what the design might be.” There was quiet pride in Jesse’s voice.

Gabe looked at the schematic again. It had a flow, a way that areas were placed so that kids would be mostly towards the safer middle with the dog runs and gardens bordering. It was the non-lethal version of a hundred mission schematics that he had seen out of Jesse. “Of all the way your talents could be used, this seems like one of the best.” Gabe couldn’t see Jesse’s face, but could feel him shifting on the bench. He never was one to take a compliment well. 

Tapping a finger on an unlabelled area, Gabe passed the tablet back. “That’s where I live. It’ll be nice to have a garden across the street, maybe I could put something of my own in there.”

“Really,” Jesse said in surprise. Gabe’s head had been rotated around so Esse could get to the side, and Gabe was finally able to see Jesse’s face. 

“Yep. Will have been there for almost a year in a few months.”

“I -” Jesse was cut off by the two girls throwing themselves off of the tables and towards two women walking over to them. Both were talking a mile a minute and insisted on showing their mothers their handiwork.

“Momma this is Mr Gabe and he let me do his hair and look how good I got at box braids!”

The woman looked familiar, and Gabe finally placed her as she snapped her fingers and said, “Large cold brew with an extra shot, multigrain croissant.” She was one of the managers at the coffee place Gabe had found.

“That’s me.” He stood up and shook both women’s hands. “Gabriel Reyes, I’m an old friend of Jesse’s.”

“I’m Monica, Ashley is Thalia’s mom. It’s good to meet you, are you going to be doing work with the Center?” 

“I have a couple jobs I’m pretty tied to, but I live local so it might be nice to pitch in every now and then.”

They made small talk for a few minutes before they parted ways. Gabe felt a small impact on his legs and looked down to see Esse hugging his hip and thigh the best she could. “See you later Mr Gabe!”  He swallowed against the unexpected lump in his throat. A handshake and hair braiding and they were your best friend. If only it could work that way in adulthood.

He and Jesse looked at each other for a minute, then laughed at their hair. “If nothing else, they do have enthusiasm,” Jesse finally said.

“That they do.” Gabe paused, thought, took a breath. “You doing anything now? Maybe we could grab some dinner.”

“I’d say yes, but I do have a reputation to uphold,” Jesse said, gesturing to his head. 

Gabe rolled his eyes. “I was just going to do takeout anyways, pizza and beer?”

“Sounds good.” Jesse frowned as Gabe pulled his hood up. “Well that’s not fair, leaving me to look like a reject Muppet all alone.”

Rooting around in a side pocket on his pants, Gabe pulled out a knit hat and handed it to Jesse. The braids were now sticking out oddly underneath but at least he wouldn’t scare small children or the elderly. 

Jesse grabbed his bag, and they walked across the park. As they made small talk, Gabe wracked his brain as to what his apartment looked like when he left. It was relatively clean, he thought. There was probably a towel on the floor somewhere but - he internally shook his head. Why did he care? This was Jesse. He’d seen Gabe tazed on the floor and stoned from tranqs and covered in most fluids the body could produce, there wasn’t much worse that he could possibly see. At the same time...this wasn’t Blackwatch any more. This was something else. Real life.

Gabe went up his steps and opened his door, tossing his keys into the tray on the table and walking in. He unzipped his sweatshirt and hung it from a hook in the living room, turning to realize that Jesse hadn’t followed him.

“Jesse?” He emerged from the entryway, an odd look on his face. 

“Sorry, sorry, I’m here.”

Gabe frowned in puzzlement for a moment. “Want to call somewhere while I shower real quick? I smell like a gym right now.”

“Sure. Supreme still good?”

“Yeah. Back in a few.”

Gabe closed the door to his bedroom, throwing his dirty clothes in the hamper. He pulled the tiny rubber bands out of his hair and fingercombed the braids out, thankful that Esse hadn’t had much time. He showered quickly, pulling on sweatpants and an old Overwatch t shirt and rubbing his hair with a towel before opening the door and going into the kitchen.

Jesse was seated on his couch, patiently undoing the braids in his hair. “Pizza’ll be here in a bit.”

“You need help with that?”

“I’d be grateful, my arms are startin’ to get sore. Who knew she could do them all so damn tightly?”

“Just a sec.” Gabe went back into the bathroom and grabbed a comb, setting it on the table as he flicked the news onto the television for background noise. Gabe shoved at Jesse until he was over to one side of the couch, sitting beside him. 

Despite being the wrong type of hair for braiding, Jesse actually had nice hair overall, thick and shiny. Gabe tried not to pull as he unravelled, but it was like follicular bomb defusion. Between the two of them, they managed to get them all undone. Gabe leaned over and grabbed the comb, running it through the freed but tangled locks as Jesse sat quietly. It was soothing, reminding him of when he would help bathe Christina’s kids. Jesse’s face was loose and content, his closed eyes letting Gabe look his fill. His eyelashes cast shadows on his cheek, trembling as his eyes moved beneath closed lids. Jesse was...quieter. Not just verbally, but physically. Gabe was used to him always playing with something, chewing on his cigar, tapping a pen or finger. Gabe’s fingers might just be that good, but he didn’t think so. 

The doorbell rang, breaking the spell. Gabe tossed the comb on the table and went to the door, exchanging money for pizza boxes. He brought them in and set them on the table, waving Jesse to the fridge. “Help yourself to whatever.”

Jesse opened the beers he pulled out with the opener on the fridge as Gabe grabbed plates, setting them on the table. They ate and drank in companionable silence for a bit, Gabe watching unobtrusively as Jesse looked around the apartment in interest. It wasn’t a lot - a two bedroom with kitchen and living area and one bathroom. Gabe had turned the second bedroom into a combined office/exercise room, with LAPD files fighting with lecture notes and free weights for space.

“You didn’t go into detail, what all are you doing with the LAPD?” Jesse asked as he took a second slice.

“Kinda like you with your organization. Little of this, little of that. We spent most of the past six months talking about dealing with omnics. How to talk first, not shoot. How to assess the situation properly when the other people don’t have faces. That kind of thing. Now...well, honestly they all need to get more in shape. I’d kick every one of them out of my strike team. I don’t know what they’re teaching them in the academy, but it’s damn sure not grappling skills.”

Jesse’s eyes crinkled around a bite of pizza. “Same old Commander.”

“I wish. None of them listen to me.” Gabe gnawed on a crust, debating his next words. “I’m...I’m always looking for someone to do demos with. Anything you might be interested in?”

The smile left Jesse’s eyes, and Gabe cursed himself for bringing it up at all. “Nah, it’s not something I’m lookin’ to get back into.” Jesse gathered the crumbs from his plate with a thumb. “It’s not like I’m some retired samurai who puts up his sword and never touches it again but - I haven’t touched a gun in almost three years. An’ before this I hadn’t gone without firin’ a weapon for longer than a week since I was eight. I don’t...don’t want to put myself back into it. Not right now.”

Gabe nodded. “I’m still active with the training, but I get it. I’m not conditioned the way we used to be, haven’t used a shotgun in I don’t know how long. Probably couldn’t hit the broad side of an Orca at this point.”

“Now you know that’s not true. Despite everything, we’re still us. Some things’re in our blood.”

It was true. Gabe couldn’t imagine a world where Jesse wasn’t accurate, where Gabe couldn’t break a neck in two moves or less. A gun in a holster could still fire.

They cleared away the plates and boxes, Gabe shoving the leftovers into zip bags for later. He walked Jesse to the door, leaning against the wall as Jesse tied his shoes. “Can we not let another few months go by before we see each other? Maybe make some actual plans?” He didn’t say  _ I miss you _ .

“Next Saturday Monica and I were goin’ to take a bunch of the kids to the Overlook, let ‘em tire themselves out hikin’ around.” He didn’t say _ I know _ .

“You have my number.”

“I’ll let you know. Night, Gabe. Thanks for dinner. And for dealin’ with the girls.”

“Night.” Gabe watched Jesse start back across the park, presumably to where he had parked. He didn’t know what he wanted out of this. More than anything, he thought, he just wanted his friend back. 

Gabe paused in the entryway, eyes falling on the table. His keys were on the glass, next to the copper ashtray that he was sure he had put them in, the tray slightly off center from where it usually resided. He always made sure to put his keys in the tray, afraid of scratching the glass of the stupidly expensive table. How odd of him to have missed it today.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Thursday:

Jesse McCree (12:47 pm): sat noon at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. you me Monica and six kids. you in?

Gabriel Reyes (12:50 pm): Sounds good. Need me to bring anything?

Jesse McCree (12:52 pm): nah i’ll pick you up at your place at like quarter of? Don’t have seats in my truck anyways for the kids so i’m bringin drinks and food

Gabriel Reyes (12:58 pm): See you then

\---

Friday:

Yariangelis Reyes (6:08 pm): uncle gabe I’m coming over

Gabriel Reyes (6:20 pm): No you’re not. Why aren’t you at school? Or at your mom’s?

Yariangelis Reyes (6:25 pm): bc matt and i broke up and i can’t deal with mom’s judgy looks bc she never liked him and sarah is friends with him and being a bitch so i don’t want to be in my apt

Gabriel Reyes (6:30 pm): Fine fine. I won’t be home for a bit, you know where the spare key is

Yariangelis Reyes (6:34 pm): yay youre my favorite uncle!

Gabriel Reyes (6:36 pm): I damn well better be, I don’t know what uncles you’ve picked up over the years. And you’re paying me back by helping wrangle some kids on a hike tomorrow.

Yariangelis Reyes (6:39 pm): what are you doing around kids? not in a weird way, but you know

Gabriel Reyes (6:41 pm): They’re part of the organization Jesse works with, we’re taking them over to the overlook to do some hiking around

Yariangelis Reyes (6:43 pm): HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU MEAN I GET TO MEET JESSE oh my god dani and mom and the twins are gonna FREAK

Gabriel Reyes (6:45 pm): Don’t think I won’t kick you out of my house to be on the streets if you can’t control yourself

Yariangelis Reyes (6:46 pm): I have a car

Gabriel Reyes (6:48 pm): I’ll tell your mom about Matt

Yariangelis Reyes (6:50 pm): FINE okay i won’t embarrass you in front of your boyfriend

Gabriel Reyes (6:51 pm): “Oh Christina, this is Gabe, I just heard the BEST thing about Yari today…”

Yariangelis Reyes (6:52 pm): FINE OLD MAN I’m ordering pizza ps

\---

Gabriel Reyes (8:02 pm): Hey is it okay if my sister’s oldest comes with us tomorrow? She unexpectedly came over and maybe you could use more eyes on the kids. I can absolutely tell her no, though

Jesse McCree (8:05 pm): nah it’d be great to meet her, put a face to the stories

Gabriel Reyes (8:06 pm): Thanks a lot I apologize in advance for anything she says, does, or is

Gabriel Reyes (8:08 pm): HI JESSE THIS IS YARI HIIII I STOLE UNCLE GABE’S PHONE

Gabriel Reyes (8:10 pm): I am so sorry, exhibit one

Jesse McCree (8:12 pm): if we survived lena we can survive her

Gabriel Reyes (8:13 pm): Go find some wood to knock on

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Put that back right now, Yari. You are absolutely not wearing that.”

“But it’s yours!”

“And if you wear it outside facilities you can get court-martialed for it. Put the shirt  _ back _ , Yariangelis.”

She grumpily folded up the Blackwatch shirt and shoved it in a drawer. “Fine, I’m wearing this.”

It was an Overwatch shirt, but at least not one that would get her arrested. “It’s three sizes too big.”

Yari shrugged and tied one side up in a knot, making it look far more fashionable than it had any right to be. 

Gabe was rooting around in his closet for a sweatshirt when a knock came at the door. Before he could move Yari was off like a shot, calling “I’ll get it!” back at him. 

By the time Gabe got to the entryway Yari was already talking a mile a minute, Jesse’s eyebrows raised with amusement. Gabe sighed as he pulled his shoes on. At least Jesse would now know what he’d dealt with for the past twenty two years.

“Yari.”

“- and then Dani decided that she wanted -”

“Yari. Bag. Water bottle.”

She turned and frowned. “I’m in the middle of a conversation.”

“Congratulations, finish it in the car. Bag. Water bottle. Now.”

She rolled her eyes and went to gather her things. Gabe rubbed a hand across the back of his neck awkwardly. “Sorry about her. I told her and the other kids stories about our time in Overwatch, and since you were around for so long you ended up in most of them. They think you’re some kind of mythical figure at this point.”

Jesse smiled softly. “It’s fine. She seems sweet.”

Gabe snickered. “Give it time. You’ll get your own dumb nicknames and mockery before you know it.”

They trooped down to the truck, Yari slithering herself in between blocks of water and bags of sandwiches in the backseat like a snake. Gabe buckled in and glanced around the vehicle as they drove off. It was clean, albeit dusty with sawdust and bits of masonry. The thought occurred to him that Jesse would have had to get a drivers’ license. Blackwatch got a hold of him at seventeen, and Gabe didn’t know if he’d ever driven legally before then. The image of the large muscular man sitting and filling out the forms surrounded by a bunch of sixteen year olds made Gabe’s mouth twitch in amusement.

His attention was brought back at the sound of his name. “- and so then Uncle Gabe said I could stay and if I helped with the kids then he wouldn’t tell mom.”

Gabe turned and fixed Yari with a baleful eye. “I let you off last night even though you ate my pizza and ice cream and drank all my beer, now I’m calling it in. Why did you guys break up?”

Yari threw herself back into the seat, folding her arms. “He’s going to Chicago for grad school and thinks I should go with him because I got into Northwestern. I already sent my acceptance for USC, I’m not changing my career plans just because he thinks we should be together. We’ve only been dating two months!”

“You could always do long distance, that’s what your parents did in graduate school,” Gabe offered.

“And Mom and Dad were in love. Matt’s nice, but I don’t love him enough to try and wrangle all of that from across the country. I certainly don’t love him enough to try and beg a place at Northwestern when I already sent my letter declining their offer. They don’t even have a good Russian program!”

Gabe settled back into his seat as she started a rant on the intricacies of departments he didn’t care about, but dutifully nodded as needed.

They pulled into the parking lot, parking next to an enormous minivan. The van belonged to Monica, and she opened the doors spilling out what seemed like an endless stream of small children. Esse and Thalia were there along with three boys and another girl. They greeted Monica, introduced her to Yari, and set to pulling the food out and laying it out on the nearby picnic tables. 

Eating quickly, the kids ran around them until the adults finished putting everything away. They all went off into the woods, following the hiking trail. Yari ran around as much as the kids, with Monica making sure none of them went off a cliff. Gabe and Jesse brought up the back, easily strolling up. At the top they had a gorgeous view of the whole Los Angeles Basin, the Pacific a thick line of blue in the distance. Gabe looked out over the sea of concrete and people, thinking about how this was what he’d spent his life protecting. It seemed to be a good tradeoff.

Jesse walked up to stand beside him, jostling his shoulder with his own. “I can hear the burnin’ from here. Thinkin’ deep thoughts?”

Gabe took in a deep breath of the clean air. “No, just...thinking about where I am now. Where I’ve been.”

Jesse nodded and they stood together in silence, listening to children scream and birds call, their shoulders pressed together despite all the space available.

They left at six when the park closed, the kids more subdued on the way down after so much sun and exercise. Monica waved a tired goodbye as they took off, and everyone else piled into the truck. Jesse suggested dinner at his bar and the others readily agreed, hungry from the day’s activities.

They ordered food and drinks, Gabe eyeing Yari’s brightly colored icy monstrosity with trepidation. “I know you know what good alcohol is, because I taught you. What...is that.”

“It’s called an elixir of I broke up with my boyfriend and am graduating in a few months and  _ someone _ didn’t have nearly enough beer in their apartment last night.”

“I have enough alcohol for normal people, not broken-hearted college students.”

“Then leave my drink alone, unless you feel like getting a broken heart yourself.” She eyed him for a moment. “Unless there’s something you feel like telling me.”

“Because I always discuss my personal life with my nieces. No.”

Yari turned her attention to Jesse. “Now that I have you here in person, what about it, eh? Any good dirt on Uncle Gabe? You have to know something.”

Jesse calmly sipped from his glass of bourbon. “I took oaths that not even retirement can break, sorry, sweetheart.” 

She slurped her drink down. “You two are no fun. I at least thought you’d get together with Professor Miller, Gabe, that’s why I gave him your number.”

Gabe sighed. “And here I thought you were trying to advance my career. No, Sam is happily married for twenty years. And straight, I think. Not to mention not my type.”

Yari shrugged. “Eh, it was worth a shot. Give me some time to figure your type out, then we’ll be in business. Well I’m newly single and you two are boring, we need more drinks!” She waved an arm at the bartender.

Several hours later, Yari was clutching Gabe’s arm as he steered her towards the truck. Jesse was inside paying as Gabe used his keys to unlock the doors. He helped Yari into the backseat, then got into the front.

“I’m gonna guesh...just a little educated guessh based on my knowing you for oh sho long...that I do in fact know your type Uncle Gabe. And it’sh back in that bar right there.”

Gabe turned and glared at Yari, who was looking at him with a drunken and satisfied look on her face. “I think you need to mind your own business, child.”

“And I think you don’t shee how he looks at you when you’re not looking.”

Gabe didn’t know how to respond to that, and was saved by Jesse opening the door. He handed  bottle of water back to Yari, who grabbed it with loose fingers. “Drink that or you’ll regret it in the mornin’.”

Jesse pulled in front of Gabe’s apartment, behind Yari’s car. Gabe glanced back and exhaled in resignation to see Yari fast asleep. He offered his keys to Jesse. “Mind opening it up while I carry her in? Unfortunately I know from experience she’s out for the count.”

Nodding, Jesse took the keys and went to open Gabe’s front door while Gabe reached in to pull Yari out. He held her in a bridal carry, her weight barely a burden, nudging the truck door closed with his hip. Jesse held the front door open, Gabe sidling past him into the hallway. He pushed the door to his office open with a knee, setting Yari down on the futon in the corner that she’d claimed last night. He took off her shoes and socks, setting them to the side as he pulled the blanket up over her. Smoothing her hair back he kissed her forehead as she snored lightly.

He stood and turned to see Jesse silhouetted against the light from the hallway, leaning against the side of the doorway. “You’re good with them,” he said as they walked into the dimly lit kitchen. “Her and the other kids. You ever think about it, startin’ a family?”

Gabe laughed quietly, not quite bitterly but on the road to it. “Sure, Jesse. Fifty something ex-soldier with a head full of trauma and a body full of scars. Plus whatever SEP shit is still flowing in my veins. You know, they never even bothered to test and see if it was teratogenic, or if the effects could be passed on? They never thought we’d live long enough to find out. Not that it matters, with Jack and I the only ones left.” He drank deeply from a bottle of water pulled from the fridge, handing one to Jesse.

Jesse turned the bottle over in his hands, condensation wetting his fingers. “Sometimes family’s found, not blood.”

Gabe shrugged, watching the rotation of the fan above him. “I’ve got Christy and the kids. The Reyes genes are passed on, I’ve got kids to spoil without having to deal with the consequences. What else would I need?”

“Not quite what I meant, Gabe,” came the quiet reply.

_ You don’t see how he looks at you when you’re not looking _ echoed in his head. Gabe lowered his gaze from the fan to Jesse’s eyes, glinting in the dim light. He couldn’t see any shift in expression. It was just...how Jesse looked at him. How he’d always looked at him.

Gabe wanted to ask him what he meant, but he let the moment go for too long. Jesse set his unopened bottle down on the table. 

“I should get goin’. Early day at the center tomorrow. Thanks for coming, it was nice to have company, and Yari’s a great kid.” Gabe moved to rise from his seat but Jesse pushed him down with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Relax, I can see myself out. Night, Gabe.” He squeezed his shoulder and walked into the hall.

“Night Jesse,” Gabe said quietly. He heard the clink of keys in the tray, assumedly Jesse dropping them off from having opened the door earlier. The front door shut with a slight creak of hinges, and Gabe finished the bottle of water. He set it in the sink to refill, putting Jesse’s unopened bottle back into the fridge. He poked his head into the spare room to see Yari sleeping deeply, arms wrapped around a throw pillow. He wasn’t worried about her, she had a good head on her shoulders. Whatever her future held, she’d be able to handle it.


	3. Chapter 3

They did better, now, managing to get together every few weeks. Sometimes it was things for the Center, once it was one of Yari’s last track meets, but usually it was just them at Jesse’s bar or the diner. The thought occurred to Gabe more than once that it was almost like dating without the romance or the sex.

He noticed that they didn’t touch they way they used to. It was a byproduct of being a physically active group that lived and worked and fought together - you were always feeling to check for injuries or hugging when someone came back okay or holding someone up that was ready to fall from injury or exhaustion. Just travelling in the Orca was hard, when you had that many broad-shouldered fighters with that much tactical gear on. Gabe got in the habit of laying his arms along the back of seats, one usually behind Jesse and the other behind either Genji or a pile of gear. But now, with no fighting or stress, they just didn’t touch much. Occasional hugs or pats on the back or shoulder, but that was it. Gabe told himself he didn’t miss it.

It was most of the way through the summer when Pete and Mark from Metro insisted on Gabe coming to the gym with them. He’d managed to get their groups in better working order, better able to react. Still nowhere near the level of Overwatch, but miles better than when they’d started. He was now working on getting leadership trained up, so they could better pass it on in the future. Pete was the head of training for SWAT and Mark was somewhere in the Tactical Support Teams, Gabe could never remember exactly where. Mark had been flirting off and on with him for months, but Gabe hadn’t let it go past winks and comments yet. He wasn’t sure why, he hadn’t gotten laid in an age and it’s not like they worked so closely that it would be an issue. He had that tall strapping blond thing going, so maybe it was just that he looked too much like Jack for Gabe’s comfort.

The gym was about halfway between LAPD HQ and Gabe’s place. It was a bare bones but clean black iron gym, weights and benches dominating with a boxing area and ring. Gabe was working through moves slowly with his partners in front of the mirrors, the sound of grunts and slaps a steady background noise. He was demonstrating a hold on Mark when unexpectedly, Gabe heard his name.

Turning, he saw Jesse, wearing ancient stained workout gear Gabe recognized from their Blackwatch days. He came over, slinging an arm around Gabe’s shoulders, to his surprise, and holding the other out for Pete and Mark to shake. “Hey, fellas. Jesse McCree, old coworker of Gabe’s.”

The men all shook hands, in a sizing up way that would make Gabe roll his eyes if he wasn’t party to it so often. “Mark and Pete are part of the LAPD group I’ve been working with, Mark with Tactical Support and Pete with SWAT.”

Pete enthusiastically told Jesse about the work they had been doing and how Gabe had helped, with Jesse asking intelligent and thoughtful questions about their inner workings. Mark was surprisingly quiet, watching Jesse carefully. After a while Jesse stepped back a bit. “It’s been great to meet you guys, but I should probably get back to my sparrin’ partner.”

Mark spoke up, finally, unfortunately. “Why don’t you spar with us? We’ve seen Gabe in action a bit but it’d be nice to see what ...other members of his group could bring to the table.”

Gabe sighed. So that was it. Male posturing, with a side of ‘you’re not the commander so obviously you can’t be that good’. “I’m sure Jesse has better things to do, Mark, and he…” he drifted off, not sure how to phrase ‘could kill you five different ways with his pinkie finger’ delicately enough to not bruise egos.

“He what? He’s retired, I’m sure a couple of years out of the game has put him on our level. We _are_ part of one of the top elite police units in the country, Gabe.”

Oh no. Now Gabe saw Jesse’s eyes flash and a lazy smile that better belonged on a tiger spread over his face. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Mark. You don’t want to do this.” Gabe tried to give a last warning as Mark followed Jesse up into the ring.

Mark looked down, the elevation adding another level of arrogance. “Don’t worry, babe. I got this.” At hearing the pet name, Jesse paused, then continued shaking out his shoulders.

“Jesse.” He looked over at Gabe, smile still on his lips but not reaching his eyes. “Be polite. I have to work with these guys.”

Eyes crinkled as the smile turned genuine. “Come on now, boss. When am I ever not polite?”

Gabe sighed and stood next to Pete to watch the carnage. Pete cleared his throat. “I take it this isn’t going to go well for Mark.”

“The only person who could regularly take Jesse down was me. Jack used to be able to, but the paperwork got to his training in the end. This will be…” Gabe paused at the sound of Mark’s body slamming to the padded floor. “...not actually that interesting.”

Mark got up, shaking his head in confusion at what just happened. The police squads were good, but Blackwatch was trained to make people dead as fast and quietly as possible, and got first-hand experience in on a regular basis. Their fighting style was a mixture of everything from Greco-Roman wrestling through judo through krav maga, whatever was needed to take their opponent down. Add that to the dirty backalley fighting Jesse had used as a teenager and it was hard to counter against.

Mark rushed Jesse again and again, ending up on the floor each time in two moves or less with Jesse bouncing gently on the balls of his feet in front of him, barely breathing hard. Mark stood up, but showed a shakiness that Gabe didn’t like.

“That’s enough, gentlemen. Call it a night.”

“No!” said Mark. “This is...I need…” he rushed sloppily at Jesse, who stuck out a foot to trip him and sent him to the floor with a lazy arm.

“Jesus, Jesse, who’d you learn that from, Esse? That’s a kindergarten move.”

“Then come up and show me how it’s done,” said Jesse, still bouncing on his feet and grinning. By this point Mark had rolled himself off the side of the ring, to go sit in a chair by Pete. After checking to make sure no permanent damage was done, Pete walked over.

“Why not, Gabe? Obviously our guys can’t fight worth shit,” this said with a definite note of acidity. “It’d be good to see what it’s supposed to look like.”

Gabe looked at him, looked up at Jesse’s expectant face, and unzipped his hoodie. He had a compression tank on underneath in addition to his sweatpants, and he toed out of his shoes and socks before accepting a hand from Jesse to be pulled up into the ring. The man Jesse had been working with when he came in tossed him two rolls of wraps, and Gabe absently started to wrap up his hands.

They squared off against each other, the rest of the gym that had gathered around to watch them fading into the background as they circled around. Jesse darted out an arm, to be easily slapped down by Gabe. Gabe sent a jab at Jesse’s ribs that was pushed aside.

“Been awhile, boss.”

“Not your boss anymore.”

Jesse came at Gabe with a fast leg sweep but Gabe got ahead of it and grabbed Jesse in a merciless takedown, the impact of their bodies shaking the lights. Jesse threw him off, Gabe landing in a crouch. They rushed towards each other, grappling and moving so quickly it was hard to tell what limbs belonged to who. The men paused to catch their breath, Gabe straddling Jesse but with a leg twisted around his torso ready to flip him.

Gabe smiled a predatory grin down at Jesse, already tense for the move he knew was coming. “Maybe I’m still your boss a little.” Jesse’s leg tightened and they were off again, Jesse taking Gabe down with his legs, Gabe springing back up and getting Jesse in a headlock and slammed down to the ground. They kept going, past any normal match length but not Blackwatch’s standards.

He’d missed this. To be grappling with someone’s slick sweaty body, with someone’s moves that he knew almost as well as his own. He would take fighting with Jesse or Jack or Ana or Reinhardt over any of the newcomers to Black- or Overwatch - he wanted to go against someone he _knew_ , someone who knew him. And the body he was going against now he’d spent more time with than any other.

As much as he was enjoying himself, Gabe was tiring. He ducked an arm and took Jesse to the floor in a brutal elbow lock, getting a hand into over-long hair that had come loose from its tie and yanking his head back. Gabe’s knee was in the small of Jesse’s back, his left arm twisted so if he tried to break the hold it would shatter the joint, his head forced back onto Gabe’s shoulder, cheek to cheek with him. Gabe turned his head to whisper in Jesse’s ear. “You’ve proved your point, you’re better than the assholes I work with. We done?”

Jesse gasped for air, but still managed a low tone. “Those assholes usually call you ‘babe’?”

“When they’re trying to fuck me they do. Don’t worry, I don’t put out for guys that fight that badly.”

Jesse grinned savagely at that, right hand slamming into the mat as he tapped out.

Gabe immediately stood, holding a hand down to Jesse to help him up. He took it, holding on to his wrist longer than necessary before letting go. Gabe knew what Jesse looked like in his clothing well enough to tell he was half hard, but that was fine, Gabe was too. Sparring was practically foreplay for them, with how they had been trained, and it wouldn’t be the first time Gabe came out of a match ready to take someone down in a very different way.

He looked at Jesse, heading to the opposite side of the ring. “We still on for the diner on Friday?”

“Yeah, see you then.”

Gabe walked back over to where Pete and Mark stood, unwrapping his hands as he went. Pete handed him his hoodie.

“Well,” Pete cleared his throat. “I see our teams have quite a ways to go.”

Gabe shrugged. “Not your fault. We were just trained very differently. And Jesse and I have been sparring for a decade and a half, we know how each other works about as well as any two people can.”

They gathered their things and made their way out of the gym. Mark stopped at his car for a moment. “Gabe, I...wouldn’t have pushed if I knew who he was. Sorry.”

Gabe watched him leave in confusion. Was he talking about his behavior just tonight, or the flirting in general? They didn’t think that he and Jesse were together, did they?

He mentally shrugged and got in the car. God, he needed a shower. He scratched at dried sweat the side of his face and paused as he could smell Jesse. It said something that he could identify the man’s sweat. Definitely time for a shower. A cold one.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The summer went on, and the new school year started before Gabe knew it. Everything was easier, now that he’d been through a year of it, and he took on another class and cut back on his time with the LAPD. He told himself that it was because they were getting better, but really it was because he just enjoyed himself more with teaching college students rather than inflexible police officers who didn’t seem to want to listen even though the information could save their lives.

He and Jesse continued to get together every once in awhile, though something had changed that Gabe couldn’t quite put a finger on. They didn’t go or do anything different, the words were all the same, but...there was a feeling, like a rubber band just starting to stretch.

One Friday morning in October Gabe walked to the coffee shop, only to see crime scene tape, clouds of smoke, and emergency vehicles. He lifted a hand to Anderson, an officer he had trained the year previous, and was waved inside the cordon.

“What happened?”

“Arson is still sorting it out, but it looks like an accident. Gas leak that ignited, mostly affected the building behind but took out a good portion of the back rooms.”

“Any injuries?” Aside from Monica, Gabe had gotten to know most of the baristas over the past year and was fond of them all.

“Some, everyone’s been shipped over to the hospital. Don’t know any more than that.”

Gabe nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, walking out of the restricted area to head back home. He texted Monica, having snagged her number at some event or other, to see if she was all right.

Later that night Gabe lay stretched out on his couch, music quietly playing from the television as he read a book with half of his attention. He was just debating about getting up for another beer when he heard a knock on his door. Glancing at the clock and frowning - who knocked on a door at 10 at night? - Gabe got up and opened the door.

Jesse stood there, shoulders slumped. He looked up at Gabe with reddened eyes, and Gabe automatically pulled him inside and into his arms, shutting the door with a foot. Jesse stood there for a full minute, face buried in Gabe’s shoulder and arms clamped around him before raising his head and propping his chin on Gabe’s shoulder.

“Monica’s dead.”

Gabe inhaled harshly. “The gas leak. I went by there earlier, they said there were only injuries.”

“She died on the operating table.”

Gabe walked him into the living room with him, sitting him down on the couch and putting a blanket over his legs before tucking him under an arm. Jesse slumped sideways, head resting on Gabe’s upper chest.

They sat like that for long minutes, quiet music still playing as Gabe rubbed circles into Jesse’s shoulder with a thumb.

“This was the longest I’ve gone since...ever, really, long as I can remember, without anyone I knew dyin’. Thought maybe I was done.”

“I hate to bring this fact to you so late in life, but we all die. Even people that don’t normally throw themselves into danger on a regular basis.”

Jesse gave a watery laugh and punched Gabe’s leg lightly with a fist. He left his hand there, tracing over the faded Overwatch logo printed on the thigh.

“I forgot what it was like to be ...so affected by it. Not that I didn’t care about everyone that died when we were in it, but…”

“When it happened that often we just got used to it.” Otherwise they would have been paralyzed by grief every moment - it’s not like they were losing agents right and left, but death and injury and disfiguration were part of the package. They grieved quickly, quietly, privately, then moved on.

“Found myself thinking about Greiner.”

Gabe paused for a moment, then nodded. He likely wouldn’t have remembered the name at all, but he had been a well-liked agent that Gabe had worked with once to expand the facility security systems. He was one of the first people to train with Jesse when he was recruited as a teenager, and had died just before Jesse’s 18th birthday in a mission gone south.

Although he had personally brought him in, Gabe didn’t have a lot of contact with Jesse back in those early days, having recruited him onto his strike team at 20 after he was trained up. He still remembered the too-pale figure drifting through the halls, though, a boy who had finally found an adult to believe in him and then had that suddenly and violently taken away.

“I remember.”

They continued to sit there for long minutes, Gabe’s hand still tracing over Jesse’s shoulder but Jesse’s hand eventually stilling on Gabe’s leg. Gabe listened to his slow breathing, knowing that he was either asleep or nearly there.

“Can I stay?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

Jesse raised his head and they stiffly got to their feet. Gabe led his way into the bathroom, rooting through cabinets and handing Jesse a new toothbrush. They had shared enough hotel rooms over the years to ready themselves for bed while moving around each other in a long-familiar dance.

Gabe didn’t react when Jesse closed the door to the bathroom, didn’t move when he heard harsh breathing and choked off sobs. Some things you had to be alone for.

He stripped down to soft flannel pants and got into bed, flicking through his tablet for news on the accident. One dead, four injured. The bed creaked as Jesse climbed in, pulling the pillow over so he could rest his head against Gabe’s shoulder.

“Is than an article about it?”

Gabe shut the window down, leaving a blank grey screen. “It’s nothing you need to read right now.” He reached over and set the tablet down on the nightstand, switching the light off as he did. “You need to be anywhere tomorrow morning, want me to set an alarm?”

“Nah.”

Gabe settled back into bed on his side, facing Jesse. Jesse moved close, crowding in until Gabe raised an arm to rest on his waist. His head was tilted down, breath stirring the hair on Gabe’s chest. They breathed together, air moving in and out of sync. Gabe could tell that Jesse was awake but didn’t want to push, didn’t want to disrupt the fragile moment.

“She was younger than me. Thirty-one. Esse’s six, her brother is eight.”

“Father?”

“He’s a good guy, surprised you haven’t run into him yet. Her sister’s around too. Has a girl in middle school. At least they have a good support system.”

Gabe rubbed his hand against the curve of Jesse’s waist for a moment. “And you’re part of that. Something to be proud of.”

Quiet. The sound of the fan in the background.

“Can you come to the funeral with me?”

“When is it?”

“Don’t know. Sometime in the next week probably.”

“Just let me know.”

Gabe kept his eyes open. He didn’t want to fall asleep before Jesse, to have him awake and worrying without Gabe there for him. He soon felt the breaths slow and smooth out, Jesse’s sounds of sleep familiar from a thousand shared missions. He bent his head the slightest bit, pressing his lips to the forehead in front of him.

This… this was good. Not the circumstances, Gabe would give it all away to get Monica back alive in front of him. But Jesse here with him, in his bed. It felt right in a way things hadn’t in an understated way since he’d left Overwatch.

Perhaps it was just him missing the old job, the lifestyle. Maybe he merely missed his friend, finally back after years away. Maybe he was just touch-starved enough to need this. But when Jesse snuffled into his chest and pressed closer, hand fumbling in his sleep at Gabe’s hip, he felt himself harden, in a way that said friendship wasn’t everything he felt.

Gabe delicately pulled back, not wanting Jesse to have to wake up and deal with his inappropriately interested cock in his time of grief. He turned over carefully, only to have Jesse sling an arm over his waist and bury his forehead between Gabe’s scapulae. Gabe exhaled in resignation and adjusted himself, firmly ignoring his body in favor of sleep.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The smell of frying bacon accompanied Gabe’s journey to wakefulness. He was alone in bed, the sheets beside him cool.

He followed his nose to the kitchen, where Jesse was setting strips of bacon to drain on a paper towel, eggs ready to be cracked beside him. Gabe opened a cupboard and pulled a mug out, filling it from the ready pot of coffee. He dumped in a spoon of sugar and gave it a cursory stir before sitting and draining half the mug.

“I could get used to this. Who needs the diner when you’re around?”

“Yeah, yeah. I would have done huevos rancheros but you don’t have salsa. What the hell kind of Latino are you?”

“The kind that needs to go grocery shopping more.”

“Obviously.”

Gabe nearly dozed right off again, head propped on his hand, to the comforting clatter of someone who knew what they were doing in the kitchen, awakening fully when a plate was placed in front of him.

“You are my favorite person in the world right now,” he said with reverence as he dug in. They’d all learned to cook out of necessity in Overwatch, switching off for weekday dinners and weekend breakfasts. Jesse was capable of making breakfast enchiladas that could make you cry, given the right ingredients.

Gabe watched Jesse out of the corner of his eye as he ate. He was still subdued, but ate well and his eyes were clear. They cleared the plates and put away ingredients, neither asking what was next.

Tossing Jesse the remote, Gabe settled himself on the couch. “Pick something. I have no plans of moving until absolutely necessary.”

Jesse selected some meaningless movie. Gabe was nearly asleep in minutes, slumping further and further sideways until Jesse pulled him down to pillow his head on his thigh. He fell back asleep to the feeling of fingers gently scratching through his hair.

Gabe awoke hours later, the light in the room telling him it was late afternoon. There was a heavy hand on the back of his head, but it felt comforting rather than restraining. He watched the nature documentary on in front of him, feeling no particular need to move. He felt Jesse awaken, fingers moving convulsively in his hair before smoothing out.

“What’re we watching?”

“Dunno. Something about the deep ocean.”

Some time later: “I don’t remember the last time I slept this much, didn’t move this much.”

Gabe yawned. “Me either, but you remember what Angela would say. Obviously our bodies need it.”

“Mmm.”

“Are you okay, with the bar? You need to call them or anything?”

“Nah, yesterday they told me to take the weekend. Most people there knew Monica, knew we were close.”

“You hungry? Been awhile since breakfast.”

“I could eat. You got nothin’ in your fridge, though. Takeout?”

Gabe reached a hand out blindly to the coffee table, fumbled til he found his phone. He scrolled through the contacts, then handed it up to Jesse. “Chinese?”

“Sure. Anythin’ in particular?”

“Mm. Something with a vegetable.”

Jesse rumbled into the phone in a comforting fashion, Gabe not bothering to listen to what he ordered. When the doorbell rang Jesse eased himself up, letting Gabe’s head down to the couch gently.

When he came back in with bags full of boxes, his cheeks were pink. Gabe sat up and stretched, directing a questioning eyebrow in Jesse’s direction.

“Forgot what I was wearin’. Gave the poor kid a bit of an eyeful.” Jesse was wearing an old pair of Gabe’s sleep pants that rode low on his hips and not much else. He was like Gabe, body changed a bit now that they didn’t keep up the constant conditioning, but still a vista of muscle and hair and tanned skin. Gabe let his obvious eyes drag down and back up, watching as Jesse’s blush spread down his neck.

Gabe adjusted himself a bit before getting up and joining Jesse at the table. They ate, battling over baby corns and trying to push the larger pieces of bok choi off on each other. As they were finishing up, Gabe’s phone rang. He looked at the display and sighed.

“It’s Christy’s biweekly ‘annoy me because she can’ call. You mind?” Jesse shook his head, waving Gabe off as he started to put away the leftovers.

Gabe answered his phone, sitting on the couch. “Hey Christy.”

“Hey Gabi, how’s tricks?”

“Eh. Could be better.” He updated her on the events of the past two weeks, what students annoyed him and how he was enjoying doing less at the LAPD. In turn she told him about how Dani was starting to pick her final colleges - “the girl wants to go out of state! I don’t care how much money MIT wants to give her, she’s never seen snow!” - and the twins were doing well in high school. Yari had a new boyfriend that Christina almost approved of, though she wasn’t going to tell her that to her face.

“You want me to take them out to lunch? Do my angry commander face at him?”

“No, no, he doesn’t deserve that and Yari’s a grown woman. It’d be nice if you could get a read on him, though. I haven’t met him in person yet.” Her voice turned speculative, as it usually did at this point in the conversation. “Anything on your front? Don’t make me live vicariously through my children, Gabi.”

Gabe was silent for just a moment too long, prompting her to say, “My god, did you actually make a move on someone?”

Gabe glanced over at the kitchen but Jesse had disappeared into his bedroom some time ago. “No, no. It’s- well. You see anything in the news about a gas leak explosion near me yesterday?”

“Yeah - oh no, did you know someone in it?”

“The manager, Monica. Her daughter was in Jesse’s program, I’d gotten to know her over a while and Jesse was pretty close to her. He came over last night, really upset in a way I haven’t seen from him in...well, many years.”

“He’s still there?”

“Yeah.”

“You hit it yet?”

“His friend just _died_ , Christina.”

“Lust in the name of adversity.”

He let the line go silent for too long.

“But you don’t want lust.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Other than him.”

“Crude.”

“True.”

“Shut up.”

“You are going to have to bring him over at some point. Yari loves him, you should inflict the rest of us on him as well.”

“Maybe I will.”

He heard the sigh down the line, knew Christina was rubbing a temple with her left hand. “I understand your trepidation, Gabriel, but if you let things go for too long you could lose it.”

“It’s only been fifteen years.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah. I should go. Give my love to the kids?”

“Will do. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Gabe clicked the phone off, staring into the darkened TV screen. Christina was right, but he was too. He should do something but...not tonight. Not right now.

They spent another night curled around each other, breathing the same air with arms and legs tangled. It would have been more of a ...thing with anyone else, but Gabe had shared so many beds and scraps of floor on missions with Jesse over the years that it just seemed like something barely worth mentioning. Except they touched each other so much less now, here in real life. Until this, until now.

Sunday morning, Gabe was wakened by a gentle hand on his forehead. He blearily focused on Jesse, who was dressed in what he had come over in Friday night and was sitting on the bed next to Gabe.

“I’ve gotta go. Monica’s funeral is goin’ to be family only, but her husband asked me to organize a memorial service in the Center’s main hall. Goin’ to go meet with them now.”

Gabe put a sleep-clumsy hand on Jesse’s arm. “You need help? A ride?”

Jesse looked down at him, a smile tugging at his lips with something Gabe couldn’t quite define on his face. “I’ll be fine. You did enough to get me out of my head.” He paused, hand moving from Gabe’s forehead to rest feather-light on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Gabe just looked up at him with sleepy fond eyes until Jesse leaned down, almost touching, nearly where Gabe wanted him to be. “This okay?” he whispered, lips just barely brushing Gabe’s with the vowel sounds.

Gabe tilted his chin up that last millimeter and caught his mouth. It wasn’t a first kiss. It was the kind of kiss you have five years into a relationship, when you don’t have to think about where you’re aiming or how hard to press because you know the other person’s body as well as your own. The outsides of their lips were dry, the inside damp, and Gabe wouldn’t open his mouth knowing what he must taste like this early before toothpaste. He pushed up for a quick moment before pulling back, murmuring for Jesse to let him know when the service was. Jesse nodded and pressed his lips to Gabe’s forehead before he vanished out the door, the distant sound of Gabe’s front door closing echoing throughout the apartment.

Rolling over, Gabe pressed his face into the pillow Jesse had used. He hadn’t showered there, so it smelled not unpleasantly of the oils of his hair. Gabe fell back asleep, curled around a body that was no longer there.


	4. Chapter 4

Things changed, and they didn’t. Gabe went to the memorial service with Jesse, fingers white from how hard his hand was held. He met Monica’s husband, Frank, who had apparently spoken of Gabe warmly enough that he got a backbreaking hug and damp spots on his shoulder. Esse spent much of the service on either Jesse or Gabe’s laps while her father ran back and forth. _You ever think about it, startin’ a family?_ in Jesse’s slow voice bounced around his head more than once, Gabe firmly shoving it to the back of his brain.

They got together, same as before. Diner, bar, pizza and beer and movies on Gabe’s couch. They never went to Jesse’s place. Gabe knew vaguely where he lived, somewhere east of him, but because everywhere they went seemed to circle around where Gabe’s apartment was, that’s where they ended up. They didn’t kiss again, though they touched more like they used to - shoulders pressed together, leaning on each other, an arm around shoulders.

The day before Thanksgiving, and Gabe was running around his apartment. He knew he was forgetting something, he just couldn’t place what it was. He had the pies - homemade, although not by him, Christina could take it or leave it - his bag was packed, what was left? He stood looking around the room with his hands on his hips when his phone rang.

“Reyes,” he snapped out automatically, not having looked to see who was calling.

“Sounds like you’re goin’ to send me on a mission any second now.”

“Sorry, Jesse. Just trying to get my shit together.”

“You didn’t leave yet, did you?”

“No, why?”

A knock at the door.

“Hold on a sec.”

He went to answer the door, only to see Jesse leaning against the supporting pillar. Gabe ended the call, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Because your sister invited me for Thanksgiving?”

Gabe sighed. “Of course she did. Come in.”

“Pardon the mess,” Gabe said as he waved a hand at the disaster that was his apartment. “So how did this happen? I mean, I’m definitely happy you’re coming, let’s establish that. But how?”

Jesse leaned against the wall as Gabe tried to sort through his stuff. “Yari had my number, from...god, I don’t even rightly remember at this point. Her mom got it out of her and when she found out that I’d done Thanksgiving at the Center the past few years, she got a bit...bossy?”

Gabe laughed, shoving rolled up plastic bags into another plastic bag and pushing it all under the sink. “That’s Christina for you. Shows her love by ordering you around. Just...know what you’re in for. Dani’s like a smaller, angrier Yari, and the twins are...well, you’ll see. Christina is pretty much me with tits and social skills.”

“Now that’s a sibling endorsement if I ever heard one. Stop walkin’ in circles, you’re makin’ me dizzy. What are you lookin’ for?”

“I don’t know! I have the pies, I have my bag, I swear there was something else I had to bring and I don’t remember what the hell it was.”

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“What? Vege-? Oh damn. That was it. The goddamn cactus.” Gabe vanished into his bedroom, emerging with a small cactus in a cheerful pot. “Dani wanted it for some experiment she’s doing, god knows if the poor thing will survive.” He wrapped it in several bags, tucking it in with the pies. “You ready?”

“Sure.”

Gabe gathered his bags. “How do you want to do this? You want to drive, I’ll navigate?”

“Sounds good.” Gabe shoved his things into the backseat of the truck, nestled next to Jesse’s familiar Blackwatch duffle with the emblems stripped off.

“So instead of, you know, buying a new bag, you just defaced the old one enough to not get arrested.”

“If it ain’t broke…”

It wasn’t necessarily the most direct route, but Gabe had them drive to the coast, winding their way up the Pacific Coast Highway before turning to climb up into Topanga. It was beautiful, the smog burning off once they got outside of downtown. Jesse rolled down the windows, the sound of waves and seabirds and smell of ocean salt threading through the air. Gabe tried to look at the ocean out the drivers’ side window but kept getting caught on Jesse’s profile, hair blown around by the breeze and craggy brow and jaw line limned with light.

They turned north and made their way up through the canyon. “It’s...some of this looks a lot like where I grew up,” said Jesse, eyes drinking in the scrubby bushes and plants that dotted the hillsides surrounding them.

“It’s surprisingly beautiful up here. We’ll have to go up into the state park, they have amazing trails that I used to threaten to abandon the kids on when they were little. Great overlooks if you’re willing to take the time to get up there.”

The truck wound its way through streets until they pulled up in front of Christina’s house. Yari was sitting on the porch swing, and she jumped up to run down and meet them. Both Jesse and Gabe got tight hugs, and Yari jumped onto Gabe’s back, refusing to let go until she got a ride into the house. At Gabe’s question of how old she actually was, she plucked Jesse’s hat off of his head and set it on her own, squeezing Gabe’s ribs with her bony knees and declaring herself a cowboy. Jesse slung Gabe’s bags over his shoulder and they made their way inside.

Christina bustled out, pulling Jesse into a tight hug that he tentatively returned. Gabe got a kiss on the cheek and a slap upside the head, asking why it took outside intervention to finally get Jesse there. Dani and the twins tumbled down the stairs, surrounding Jesse in a whirlwind of smiles and questions and eyes that looked unnervingly like Gabe’s. Christina shooed them all outside, leaving the adults to take a breather and a drink in the kitchen.

“How was the drive up?”

“Pretty as ever. I was telling Jesse we should get into the park at some point, do some hiking.”

“If you want to do more than that, I know Yari and Dani were going to go on a run tomorrow morning on one of the trails.”

“Thanksgiving morning. Running. Saying this as someone who enjoys the activity, no thank you.”

They bickered back and forth, as Jesse watched with amusement. Christina saw his face and smiled a bit herself. “You can say it. I’m like if Gabi was less of an asshole.”

“I think the exact phrase he used was ‘him with tits and social skills’, but asshole works too.” Jesse grinned as Gabe kicked him under the table, muttering _traitor_.

They were unloading the pies - “I know you didn’t make these, Gabi.” “Yeah, but they were made by Daphne. Homemade! It has to count for something.” - when a knock came at the front door.

The men followed Christina as she opened the door to find a nervous looking young man with a bag over his shoulder. “Hello ma’am, I’m -”

He was cut off by Yari’s rocketing into the room. “Mompleasedon’tkillmeItoldhimtocome!”

Christina froze her in her tracks with a cold look that could have been right at home in a Blackwatch commander’s uniform. “Talk. Now.”

“This is James, my boyfriend that I told you about. His family is all in Toronto and he had to miss Thanksgiving with them in October and campus is empty and I couldn’t just leave him alone for Thanksgiving and please don’t be mad at me!”

Christina’s left eye had a distinct twitch. “You know I would never turn anyone away at Thanksgiving, but I would appreciate some _warning_.” She turned to James, who looked like he wanted nothing more than to sink into the floor. “I apologize for how this is making us look. Welcome to our home, I am Christina. This is Yari’s uncle Gabe, and Jesse. You’ll meet Yari’s siblings soon, I’m sure.” The kid unwound a bit in the face of Christina’s warmth, stepping forward to shake hands all around.

Yari grabbed at his arm and started to pull him towards the stairs.

“Yariangelis Iselda Reyes.” Frost practically formed on the air. “Where are you going.” It was a command rather than a question.

“Up..stairs?”

“Not to your room, you’re not.”

“Mother, I am twenty-three -”

“And have the manners of a twelve year old. I’m sure James is a delightful person and I have no need to know about your personal life as long as you’re being safe. But if he suddenly shows up under my roof he is not going to be staying in your room.”

“Then where is he going to go? Don’t you dare stick him on the couch, that thing is a biohazard with the way Benji throws food around.”

Christina muttered to herself for a moment. Gabe turned to Jesse and tilted his head in a silent question. Jesse nodded.

“Christy. Jesse’ll stay with me in the spare room, stick the kid in the sewing room. And it’s downstairs, which’ll make you sleep better.”

“Uncle Gabe!”

“You brought this on yourself, girl.”

Before she could protest more, Gabe grabbed up James’ bag and hauled it over to the sewing room. It actually held a multitude of things, everything from quilting projects to Dani’s half-built computers to mysterious flasks that Christina couldn’t remember where she got or what they contained so they were carefully ignored. There was a futon with blankets and pillows that had been assumedly prepared for Jesse, but now were James’ new home.

Gabe turned to the kid, who looked not a little terrified. “Chill out kid. I’m not going to threaten to kill you or anything. I’m not the one you have to worry about. I will say that you shouldn’t try and sneak in to Yari’s room - Christina wouldn’t normally care, but she doesn’t like surprises and I have a guest too and she’s a bit on edge so don’t push it. _Comprendes_?”

James nodded. “Yessir.”

“Come on. Let’s get everyone fed.”

Gabe led James into the warm kitchen, which had a stack of pizza boxes on the counter. “We come all this way for pizza, really?”

“We’re going to be cooking all day tomorrow, I’m damn well not expending any effort tonight.” Christina poked him in the forehead with a breadstick, which Gabe grabbed and shoved in his mouth. “And I see your manners are as delightful as ever.”

Dinner was a raucous affair, manners forgotten in the face of pizza and new people. James came out of his shell a bit, proving to be a funny young man a year ahead of Yari in the same masters program. Benji and Alana pestered Jesse into telling some of the stories they’d heard from Gabe, wanting to know what he’d left out in the face of being age-appropriate. Jesse laughingly refused to tell much more, though he did crack everyone up with a tale of Gabe scaring the bejesus out of Reinhardt at Halloween, which ended up with a broken table and total loss of dignity.

After a haphazard cleanup, they all piled into the living room, Gabe next to Jesse on the couch with Dani on his other side, Christina pointedly sitting next to Yari and James, and the twins flopping into an oversized chair together in the boneless way of all 14 year olds. There was a whole series of movies that the Reyes clan watched on the night before Thanksgiving, starting with a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and going on from there. They tended to watch until everyone drifted off to bed, preparing for a long day of cooking and eating.

By the time they got to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the twins and Dani had already gone up to bed, James had left for the sewing room with a sleepy good night, and Gabe was falling asleep against Jesse. Yari and Christina were in the kitchen talking quietly, Gabe hearing bits and pieces of the conversation as he drifted.

“ -don’t want you bothering them, okay? They need this.”

“Fine, fine. It only took them how many decades?”

“Hush, child. You hear the funny tales that Gabriel has brought you over the years, not the ones with blood and death. Take a history class and learn about what they’ve been through. Maybe you’d be a little hesitant too to get close to someone.”

Gabe dozed for a minute.

“ - should see the way they look at each other. I think I got drunk and told Gabe about it once, but I don’t know if he took me seriously.”

A pause, as dishes clattered.

“Reminds me of you and Dad. How we all used to be.” The sound of a kiss to a forehead.

“ _Te amo_ , _querida_. Now go wake them up, I don’t want Gabi to try and bow out of cooking because he says his neck hurts.”

Gabe’s shoulder shook, and Yari’s smiling face leaned down at him. “Go to bed, old man. We want you cooking on all cylinders tomorrow.”

Gabe pulled her in for a sloppy kiss to the top of her head before pushing her off in the direction of the stairs. He turned to gently shake Jesse. “Come on. Bedtime.”

They wearily went upstairs, doing the most cursory of ablutions before changing and falling into bed. It was only a full size, but they curled up together easily. Gabe’s head was tucked under Jesse’s jaw, his breath grazing his windpipe. Tired as he was, unsure of their status as he was, Gabe leaned forward to delicately press his lips to the tempting stubbled expanse before him. He was able to feel it up close and personal as Jesse’s breath caught in his throat. Jesse pulled back, rolling annoyed but indulgent eyes at Gabe.

“Too tired. Too late. Too in your sister’s house. Later, okay?” He pressed an apologetic kiss to the corner of Gabe’s mouth, Gabe turning to catch his lips fully. He gave a smile of satisfaction against Jesse’s lips at the soft whimper he gave, ducking down to tuck his head back into the crook of Jesse’s neck.

A pounding on the door made both men start the next morning. “Wake up, sleepyheads! We’ve got cooking to do!” Yari’s voice was far too cheerful for the time of day.

“Ugh. And she and Dani already went for a run. Disgusting.”

“Go back to sleep, I’ll shower first.” Gabe closed his eyes, drowsing to the domestic sounds of Jesse gathering his things.

Less than a minute later, Gabe felt his shoulder being shaken. He looked up to see Jesse, hair still damp. “I swear I just shut my eyes.”

“Yeah, fifteen minutes ago. Up an’ at ‘em, I’m not facing your clan without you.”

Gabe showered and dressed quickly, following the sounds downstairs. Jesse sat at the kitchen table with the two older girls, watching with horrified awe as they dug into stacks of pancakes bigger than their heads.

“It’s like when Lena would stretch herself too far and need to get her calories back up. Except worse, somehow.” Jesse said, taking a delicate bite of his own short stack.

“They don’t have the cute accent to make it seem charming,” Gabe said on his way to the coffeemaker, pulling Dani’s ponytail and making her choke on juice as he went.

“Rude, Uncle Gabe. Didn’t they teach you any manners in the military?”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t know which fork to use but I could probably use one to disarm a bomb.”

“That’s not true,” Jesse said, thoughtfully chewing on a slice of melon. “We went to that super fancy white tie event a while back, the one in Luxembourg?”

“No, _you_ went to that event and got to eat capanes and schmooze. _I_ was going through the sewers and trying to figure out where they hid a Bastion unit. You got the forks, I got human waste.”

They held each other's eyes for a moment before going back to their food. Unsaid was that Jesse had distracted a visiting dignitary with a handjob before taking him and his entourage out with a silenced gun, stealing the data they were going to sell. Unsaid was the broken arm and subsequent infection that even SEP couldn’t fight off when Gabe got into a close-quarters fight with Talon agents looking for the same robot, leaving him in a coma for three days.

“Ugh,” said Dani. “They’re doing that thing again, where you know that the story’s a whole lot better than that but they’re not going to tell us because they’re sticks in the mud.”

“Get used to it. I’ve been working on them for a year and getting nowhere,” said Yari grumpily.

“Eat up, we need to clear out so we can get started on the ropa.”

Jesse tilted his head in question.

“Fun fact, none of us actually like turkey. So we do most of the usual American sides, but we always make a giant batch of ropa vieja as the main dish. Christina’s late husband, Alex, was Cuban, and we’ve kept making it in honor of him.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Remember about ten years back, Gérard was on a big mission with Ana in Brazil, and there was an attack on Vishkar and everything went to hell?”

Jesse nodded. “It was somethin’ about hard light tech...it was before LumeriCo got involved.”

“Yeah. Alex was there presenting at a conference.”

“God. I’m so sorry.”

“Made it stand out clearly, that there were people and not statistics scattered around what we do.” After the funeral Gabe doubled down on reducing collateral damage. He couldn’t solve it all, but he definitely cut down on the innocent casualties that Blackwatch caused.

The girls were chattering as they cut up beef and vegetables, having made the dish enough times that they didn’t need a recipe. Jesse watched them, a slightly sad expression on his face.

“They’re who we did it for,” he said quietly. “Them and Esse and your students and all of them. So they can make Thanksgiving dinner and go hiking and not worry about dyin’ every minute. I just...wish I could have gotten to know them all while I was still fightin’, might have made it feel more worth something.”

Gabe reached out and wrapped his hand around Jesse’s tense grip on his fork, rubbing until his grasp loosened.

“You’re adorable and all, but could one of you tall people come over here and get the Dutch oven down?” Yari was tapping her foot as she crossed her arms.

“Uh huh. I see why you keep me around. You just want me for my body,” quipped Gabe as he stretched up to pull the pot down from the high shelf.

“I’m not the only one,” Yari muttered, yelping as Gabe stepped on her foot.

“Oh, I am _so_ sorry, o darling niece of mine, I’ll make sure to step more carefully in the future,” Gabe simpered.

“Shut up and peel potatoes.”

Despite everyone’s dire warnings, the work went quickly with two extra sets of hands in the kitchen. They all sat down that evening to a vast spread, seemingly more than even the eight people at the table could eat. They did their best to make a dent, food vanishing at an astounding rate with five young people at the table.

Even though it was traditionally a holiday of overindulgence, Gabe never tried to overeat at Thanksgiving. It was better to not feel sick and have leftovers, in his opinion. The teenagers didn’t feel the same way, and sat scattered around the kitchen and living room moaning as the adults cleaned up. As Christina set dishes to soak and Gabe wrapped up food to Tetris it into the already full fridge, Jesse pestered Yari into helping gather the scattered silverware and cups.

The younger kids trundled off to their rooms as James and Yari helped clean. After drowsily trying to put the spoons in the fridge, Jesse pushed Yari off in the direction of bed, deeming her useless for anything other than sleep. She gave him a hug and muttered, “Night, Uncle Jesse” before stumbling off to bed. Gabe watched as Jesse’s back stiffened, walking over to the back door and opening it to go onto the porch. Gabe finished loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher, Christina giving him a hug goodnight on her way up the stairs.

Gabe stepped out onto the porch with Jesse. It was a beautiful view, forest and the edge of a lake. The stars shone down, away from the city smog and light pollution.

“Remember what you told me? Sometimes family’s found, not blood.”

Jesse took a shaky breath. “I just. Never thought it would be somethin’ I’d get to have.”

Gabe shrugged. “You’ve been assimilated. Sorry.”

“Not sorry, don’t be sorry,” Jesse muttered as he reached up and pulled Gabe’s head down to him.

This was nothing like the familiar kiss of before or the sleepy kisses of last night. This was deep and slow and unexpectedly punched Gabe down to his core. He had never been kissed quite like this - Gabe was the one that did the kissing, always the larger, the stronger one that would hold the other person cradled in his arms. Jesse wasn’t that - he was as broad as Gabe, sinew and flesh and scars and skin coming together in a body that Gabe had touched more than any other save his own.

Gabe held onto a firm waist and strong shoulder as his head was gripped, was nearly _covered_ by broad hands that directed it where they wanted him to go. Jesse’s tongue stroked deep into Gabe’s mouth, taking his time to explore what he held in front of him. A nip to the scar on his lower lip, soothed by warm wetness. A quick swipe behind his front teeth, sending a shiver down his spine. As Gabe’s hips rocked automatically forward to be met with a thick thigh, he pulled back, trying to clear his head.

“Upstairs. No, mmph - Jesse, up _stairs_.”

The time between the porch and the spare room vanished, and Gabe found himself looking at Jesse sprawled on the bed from where Gabe had shoved him, fingers tugging at the buttons of his shirt. Moonlight poured in the window onto Gabe where he stood at the foot of the bed, lighting the ends of every one of his hairs with a cold fire. He pulled his shirt off, Jesse groaning at the sight. “Now that’s just not playin’ fair.”

“Fair’s for people that don’t care enough,” said Gabe as he fell forward to cover Jesse’s body with his own.

Once again Jesse held his face in his hands, held him like Gabe might possibly pull away, held him like he was breakable. Gabe let him, Gabe would let him do anything because they were here, they were finally here. Jesse kissed him like he had all the time in the world, as if they were teenagers and this was the end goal and not just a stop on the way to fucking. His lips moved over Gabe’s scars like he could heal them with his tongue, like they could be another entryway into Gabe if he could just push through.

Gabe’s hands weren’t idle, holding himself up with one arm as the other roamed over Jesse’s body. Jesse’s head jerked back, lips tearing away from Gabe’s with a sound like pain as Gabe’s nails scratched over the curve of muscle below his ribs. Gabe smiled to himself and set his lips to the tempting arc where neck met shoulder, teeth scraping over smooth skin. As he made his way down Jesse’s body the hands let go of his face, one finding a home in his hair and the other moving from neck to shoulder and around and back, restless.

He paused, hand on Jesse’s fly and chin nudging over the swell under restricting denim. “This okay?”

“Don’t you dare stop,” came the raspy reply, and Gabe obliged by flicking open the button and pulling down the zipper. Jesse’s cock pushed out, the tight material having kept him compressed. Gabe mouthed over the cotton covered skin, feeling out the shape under his lips.

“Gabe,” he looked up at his name to see Jesse looking down at him with an expression in his eyes that was somewhere between love and lust and fear. “Don’t...don’t tease.”

In response Gabe pulled the jeans and underwear down and off, not looking where they went as he only had eyes for the body in front of him. He’d seen Jesse naked before - everyone in Blackwatch had seen everyone naked, covered in bruises and blood, clothes ripped off so a femur could be pushed back beneath skin, so an injection could go into fatty muscle, so a burn could get air. He’d never seen him like this, though, body slowly writhing like a shark that would die if it stopped moving, cock flushed an angry red. He heard Jesse inhale as he slid his mouth down over him, not exhaling until he had pulled slowly back and let the head audibly pop out of his mouth. Gabe dredged up memories of every good blowjob he’d had, every good one he’d given, wanting this to be enough to erase anything but pleasure from Jesse’s mind. He deserved that.

He didn’t have a chance to do much, Jesse’s hand soon trying to push his head away as he made soft choking noises. Jesse came with a muffled cry, arm over his mouth as even in orgasm he tried to do the right thing and not wake up the rest of the house. Gabe stroked him through it, hand working smoothly and mouth gently sucking at the spongy tip. Clumsy hands pulled at Gabe until he was back up at the head of the bed, sloppy kisses pressed to his face and tasting the stray drops caught in Gabe’s beard.

Gabe let himself be pushed onto his back as the kisses became more purposeful. Jesse’s hair fell around them like a curtain, and Gabe was so intent on making Jesse’s mouth his property that he didn’t notice his pants were being pushed down until he felt a cool hand wrap around him. He groaned, the wide fingers folding around like they were made for him, calloused thumb smearing his wetness around until the strokes became smoother, slicker.

He breathed shakily into Jesse’s mouth, having lost the coordination for kisses. Jesse bit at the soft skin under his jaw, the scrape of teeth alternating with soft laves of his tongue. The overstimulation pushed Gabe over the edge, moaning softly as his hips jerked and he spilled on the inside of Jesse’s wrist. Gabe relaxed back into the bed in post-coital bliss, groaning as he watched Jesse lick his wrist clean with efficient strokes of his tongue.

“Are you _trying_ to kill me?”

“I’m trying to be polite and not scandalize your sister when she does laundry.” Jesse leaned down and Gabe tasted himself on his tongue.

Gabe kicked his pants the rest of the way off and pulled the covers up over their naked bodies. They slotted together like they had a dozen times before, but this time Jesse’s arm rested on Gabe’s bare ass, Gabe’s hand threaded through Jesse’s hair.

Reaching over to the nightstand Gabe grabbed his tablet, setting an alarm. At Jesse’s questioning noise he smiled and said, “You really want anyone barging in here to wake us up?”

Maybe it was the sex, maybe it was the comfort, but Gabe fell asleep quickly and slept more deeply than he could recall in recent memory.

When the gentle buzz of his alarm went off the next morning, Gabe turned it off quickly and carefully untangled himself, letting Jesse stay asleep. He showered, taking his time as he relived his memories of the night before with a soapy hand on himself. He dressed quietly so as not to wake Jesse and padded downstairs. The house was quiet, Christina sitting at the table and reading the news on her tablet.

“There’s coffee if you want it,” she said.  Gabe sat down with a mug and contemplated it with half-open eyes as he waited for the caffeine to kick in.

“You’ve got a little something there,” Christina said, motioning to the side of her neck. Gabe reached up in confusion only to redden as he felt the mark Jesse sucked there last night. She laughed softly and bumped his leg with her knee. “Nice going. Though why you had to wait until you were here, I don’t know. You’re setting a terrible example for Yari.”

Gabe just hid his face in his coffee, only emerging at the feeling of a kiss to the top of his head as Jesse passed by on the way to the coffeemaker.

Christina hid a smile, asking when they were leaving. Gabe had another day off but Jesse had work at the Center the next day, helping break ground on what would be a storage unit for a local women’s shelter. “We’ll leave after lunch, let everyone wake up and say goodbye,” Gabe mused.

They ended up leaving late in the afternoon, goodbyes stretching out. “You know that they’re never going to let you go, now that they’ve had a taste,” Gabe said, as they drove down the coast.

“Well I guess we have to officially be together then,” Jesse said with a smile, eyes on the road. “For the sake of your family.”

Gabe’s heart caught somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. ‘You...you’re sure?”

Jesse took a hand off the wheel to thread through Gabe’s fingers resting on his thigh. “I feel like I’ve been able to finally be myself, learn what it’s like to live a normal life. And you’re part of that.” He squeezed his fingers.

When they got to Gabe’s, he pulled Jesse out of the truck. “Come on, you may as well stay. Put your laundry in my machine, you can just go right across the street tomorrow to work.” He emphasized it with a kiss, pressing Jesse up against the side of the cab.

“Well with an eloquent argument like ‘come do laundry’, how could I resist?” Jesse said with a laugh, letting himself be pulled up the stairs. They showered first, exchanging long slow kisses that didn’t go anywhere under the falling water. Gabe was horrified at the sheer amount of time it took Jesse to detangle and wash his hair. It was worth it, though, he decided later, shivering when the damp strands trailed down his body as Jesse kissed his way across his thighs.

Jesse shoved their clothes in the washer as Gabe tried to clean up the living room from the disasterous state he had left it in. Jesse helped the best he could, though he paused in the entryway as he hung up their coats.

“I can’t believe you kept the damn ashtray,” he called back to Gabe.

Gabe laughed, a bit awkwardly. “Yeah, I found it when I was cleaning out my quarters, and it just seemed to...fit.”

Jesse wrapped his arms around Gabe’s waist and kissed him thoroughly. “It works.”

They collapsed on the couch after a dinner of leftovers, Christina having pressed boxes and boxes of Tupperware upon them on their way out. Gabe grabbed the remote and flipped through channels, trying to get the local news. He hadn’t read a headline in days, deciding to ignore the outer world in favor of his family.

“Stop, _stop_ , Gabe. Look.” Jesse grabbed his arm, staring at the television screen that showed multiple enormous explosions going off.

“Is...is that...oh my god, it’s Zürich.” Gabe’s eyes burned, he was staring so hard at the screen. He clicked the sound up on the television.

“...we now know that the reformed international terrorist organization known as Talon has claimed responsibility for the recent atrocities centering on facilities belonging to the peacekeeping organization Overwatch worldwide.” The anchorwoman’s face disappeared as scenes of destruction from Korea, Japan, Russia, Brazil went by across the screen.

“We do not yet have a statement from Overwatch, which as the world knows helped defeat Talon and end the omnic hostilities just a few years ago. Will this be what brings Overwatch back to its former glory? Stay tuned.”

Gabe and Jesse sat in stunned silence as cheerful commercials played, Gabe finally pressing mute.Just as he was opening his mouth to say something, there was a buzzing sound and flashing red lights. They turned their heads to see both of their tablets, lying abandoned on the coffee table, flashing their screens in a horribly familiar pattern.

Slowly, feeling like the world was about to change, Gabe grabbed his tablet. The lights stopped and a small button was in the middle of the otherwise black screen, the word IDENTITY spelled out in chillingly simple letters. Gabe pressed the button, saying in a voice that was far more even than it had a right to be, “Gabriel Reyes.”

The screen blanked, before a video came up. Jack’s face, looking more tired than Gabe could ever remember seeing him. “Former agents of Blackwatch and Overwatch. This is Commander Jack Morrison. I am sorry for having to send this message, and sorrier for the reasons behind it. I am sure that you have seen the chaos that the world is now in. Overwatch Headquarters has been obliterated, and Watchpoints around the world were targeted by the reformed Talon. It is not yet public knowledge, but we believe that Null Sector has also reorganized and is assisting them. I do not make this call lightly, but we have had hundreds of agents and Overwatch personnel killed in just a few days, and we are barely holding our remaining assets together. I know that many of you have retired fully from military life, but,” Jack paused, and Gabe could see the muscle twitch in his jaw that said he was holding on to his last nerve with his fingertips. “We have no one left, no other recourse. The world is in danger, and us with it. Our new headquarters are at Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Please, if you are able, respond. Morrison out.”

Gabe sat frozen as Jesse grabbed his own tablet, muttered his name, and confirmed receipt of the same video. A small chime came from Gabe’s tablet, and he touched the screen with a jerky finger.

Jack’s face appeared again, but this time without the mask of professionalism. He looked so old, so tired, hair having gone completely white. “Gabe. I am so sorry. We need you.” He looked down, before visibly steeling himself to look back up at the camera. “I’m trying to hold everyone together, but it’s just not enough. Find McCree if you can. Come back home. The job’s not done yet.”

The video ended.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears.

“Gabe.”

“Gabe?”

“Gabe, what are we going to do?”

He stared into space for long minutes before meeting Jesse’s wide, apprehensive eyes.

"Gabe?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading yall <3


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